#tchig

Chapter 1: Leo and Piper have an extended sleepover

It wasn’t a discussion between Leo and Piper whether or not to go to Jason’s funeral. They came to the decision that they wouldn’t silently—or as silently as one could come to an agreement when all parties involved were sobbing.

Maybe it should have been a discussion. There was a part of Leo that worried he’d regret this later—his refusal to take this chance to say goodbye and let himself grieve.

But Leo remembered his mother’s funeral. Remembered the way his aunt Rosa had looked at him like she knew his mother’s death had been his fault. Leo couldn’t stand the thought of people looking at him like that again.

He also didn’t remember his mother’s funeral bringing him any sense of closure or comfort. He’d stood at her grave, afterwards, just as desperate and afraid and utterly inconsolable as he’d been before the funeral, except it had suddenly felt sickeningly final. The wound it had torn in his soul had kept bleeding for years, and the scars would stay forever. He didn’t need any of Apollo’s shitty oracles to know Jason’s death would be exactly the same.

At this point, Leo was pretty sure his sanity was being held together by a combination of jokes and a truly questionable amount of duct tape.

Beyond all that, though, Camp Jupiter was a battlefield right now. It would continue to be a battlefield for the foreseeable future.

Leo wasn’t a coward. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go back and help. But one of his best friends was already in a box, and there was no way in hell he’d risk the other.

With how tightly Piper was clinging to him, maybe she was thinking the same thing. 

For all his big talk about dragon escorts, Festus did most of the actual escorting on his own, occasionally torching what Leo hoped were monsters and not random public monuments. Leo, for his part, spent most of the journey crammed into the backseat of the car next to Piper, sandwiched between her and a bunch of moving boxes that seemed determined to flatten him into a Leo-shaped pancake whenever they took a sharp turn.

He’d spent so long thinking about seeing her and Jason again. 

He’d talked Calypso’s ear off about them the whole journey, to the point where it had clearly started to annoy her. He’d thought about various ridiculous entrances he could make, and the fact that he’d probably get yelled at, but he’d also thought about sitting together by the campfire, sharing nachos. He’d thought about Jason hugging him so fiercely that he couldn’t breathe, and Piper cussing him out while she held him, making him promise never to do anything that reckless again.

Now Piper was actually holding him, and Leo couldn’t feel anything. There was a numbness in his chest. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to ever feel happiness again. Hell, even if he did, what was the fucking point? Every time anything even remotely good happened in his life, it got ripped away from him again.

They didn’t talk a whole lot for most of the drive. They cried until it felt like they couldn’t anymore, clinging to each other like desperate children.

Even if they’d wanted to talk about what had happened, Piper’s dad was right there, and despite the Mist usually working overtime for them, having him overhear seemed like a gamble. Or, well, maybe that was what Leo told himself. Maybe he just wasn't sure he was ready to hear it all. He still felt like he couldn’t think. He was overwhelmed to hell and couldn’t stop fidgeting.

Several hours into the trip, his stomach started grumbling. Piper dug through the bag at her feet and offered him one of her PB&J sandwiches, but Leo couldn’t eat. He hadn’t skipped a meal in forever—he’d been homeless and unsure when he’d even get access to the next meal enough times that it had been all but tattooed into his skull that he couldn’t afford to—but he couldn’t even think about eating without feeling sick. He thought about Jason. He thought about the state he’d left Camp Jupiter in and the fact that they hadn’t even been able to give the dead their proper funeral rites.

Had Leo’s help made any difference at all? Had anything he’d done in his life changed things even slightly?

Leo knew the Fates had intended for it to be fire that fell—for him to burn in a bright, hot blaze and turn himself to charcoal. But he’d refused to stay dead like a good little pawn, and now Jason was gone, and it was all his fault.

He wasn’t sure how Piper could even look at him right now, but he was beyond grateful that she was holding onto him as tightly as she did. It was the only reason he didn’t fall to pieces completely. The cog at the heart of Leo’s machine had broken in a way that made it utterly beyond repair, and now it felt like a matter of time before the whole thing came apart. Piper holding him was the only reason his remaining pieces were still functioning. 

It should have been impossible for Leo to fall asleep under these circumstances, but he’d been traveling for hours and fighting before then and he’d cried out his remaining energy, so eventually, the world started to fade around him, reduced to just the sound of Piper’s breaths, until finally, those went, too.

~~~~

It would have been kinder, maybe, if Leo had dreamed up some shitty visions promising violent death and/or the end of the world. That would have been business as usual. 

Instead, he dreamed of his time on the Argo II—of one of those early nights when the different groups were still getting to know each other, having a brief moment to breathe between their ridiculous tasks and saving the world. 

It had seemed reasonable to catch each other up on what had happened on their end. Percy, Hazel and Frank had talked about rescuing Thanatos, and Piper, Jason and Leo had told them what had happened with Hera in turn. 

This would have been a boring intel conversation at best, seeing as Leo had been there for all of their part, but they’d grabbed snacks and sat on cushions on the floor and made it a whole bonding activity. Jason had been wedged between Piper and Leo, and they’d taken turns storytelling. 

And Jason had bragged. So much. But he hadn’t even had the decency to brag about himself like a normal human being. Instead, he’d talked about how capable Piper and Leo had been, somehow managing to make Leo sound like the coolest person he’d ever met. Which was ridiculous, considering he’d met everyone else on their team.

And sure, Leo made it sound like he thought he was amazing all the time, but he was exaggerating, which everyone, himself included, knew. 

Jason didn’t seem to have gotten the memo, though. He had one arm wrapped around Leo the whole evening, and he got all starry-eyed when he talked. 

“Leo took on three Cyclopes by himself. Three!”

“Dude, stop!” Leo had laughed, shaking his head. “I know I’m incredible and you’re blessed to be friends with me and stuff, but you weren’t even conscious for that part.”

“Still happened, though.” Jason had beamed at him. “You’re amazing, dude. I would have died about fifteen times on that mission if it hadn’t been for you. You guys should’ve seen him.”

It would have been easier if Leo had thought Jason was just trying to talk him up to the others to make them more willing to trust him after how badly he’d messed up in New Rome, but Jason wasn’t the type. He’d looked like he honestly believed every single word he was saying.

So, of course, Leo had refused to seriously deal with any of the things that made him feel.

“Sorry, Pipes, but I’m pretty sure your boyfriend is in love with me. It’s the fire powers, I’m afraid. I’m just too hot to resist,” Leo had joked instead, and Piper had untangled herself from Jason’s other side to throw Doritos at Leo, and everything had been right in the universe.

~~~~

Waking up from that, blearily blinking himself awake in the car full of moving boxes and remembering… that was a worse punch in the gut than waking up from most nightmares had been. And Leo should know. He’d had so many of those over the years that he was basically a certified nightmare expert at this point.

Leo wanted to go back in time and spend forever in that one evening, living it over and over and over again until the Fates or a temporal paradox or something eventually killed him. He wanted to hold on to what they’d been back then—the three of them together and happy and whole,back before they’d realized what the prophecy really meant. 

He wanted to stay wrapped in Jason’s arm and hear him laugh at whatever stupid joke Leo came up with while he and Piper threw snacks at each other like ten year olds. He wanted to believe he could actually be the person Jason was bragging about—this invincible hero that could do just about anything and saved people’s lives.

But Leo had never been that hero. Even his sacrifice had been the selfish decision of a coward who wasn’t ready to die just yet. Jason had been their Superman. The guy who could fly and threw lightning and saved people from falling to their deaths. Jason had been the hero. And ultimately, that had been what killed him.

Leo wasn’t exactly sure what he planned to do once they got to Oklahoma. He should have been heading back to the Waystation, to give Calypso the normal life he’d promised. But he wasn’t thinking about Calypso, or the Waystation, and the thought of a normal life had gone out of the window the second he’d seen the coffin. Besides, the Waystation would mean people asking questions, wanting to know about his mission and asking him to talk about his feelings, and he didn’t want that.

The only thing Leo really wanted to do right now was not think. 

By the time they got to the house, it was so late that cross-country dragon flight seemed inadvisable for visibility reasons alone, so Leo agreed to stay the night. Festus nuzzled him for a bit, got a fuel snack from the canister Leo had brought and then folded down into his million pound suitcase form for the night.

It took a little under two hours to carry all the boxes inside, which was an annoying amount of time to be carrying boxes but seemed like an absurdly short amount to move the contents of an entire life.

They spent some time in search of the necessities that needed to be unpacked, but the house was still furnished and also had running water and electricity as of a few days ago, so it wasn’t that bad.

While Piper went in search of some ancient camping gear so Leo wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor—this seemed silly to him, the floor was far from the worst place he’d ever slept—Leo asked Piper’s dad if he could help with dinner. 

Tristan looked relieved at his offer, actually. He’d been staring at the assorted vegetables with a slightly lost expression, trying to hack at one of the zucchinis with a butter knife. It seemed like he was trying to remember how cooking worked and had just discovered he had absolutely no idea. 

Considering how long he’d been an insanely rich guy with a personal cook, Leo guessed that actually might have been a pretty accurate read on the situation. 

“You might want to try a sharper knife,” Leo suggested, which made Piper’s dad look absolutely mortified. “Try not to chop off any of your fingers, though. I think Piper’s been traumatized enough for one week.”

The words were out of his mouth before Leo could think to stop them. Tristan didn’t laugh, but at least it didn’t seem like he’d be tossing Leo out of the house over this. Maybe he realized people sometimes said stupid shit when they were grieving. Maybe Piper had just warned him in advance that Leo was like this sometimes.

Tristan just went to find a different knife, which would have maybe been concerning if he hadn’t gone back to hacking at the vegetables a moment later.

“Well, at least this one is actually cutting through the zucchinis. That’s already an improvement.”

“Yeah, I’m basically a cooking expert,” Leo said with a grin, only half-joking. He went to peel and chop up the carrots, and was done with those and about half the mushrooms by the time the poor zucchini had been hacked to bits.

“You and Piper went to school together, right?” Tristan asked after a while of them quietly chopping vegetables for the casserole, trying to make sense of things with information he didn’t have and that, judging from past evidence, probably would have made his skull crack. “You and her and Jason.”

“Yeah. We went to Wilderness school together.” Leo winced, trying not to think too hard of Jason while also trying to remember the lies they’d already told Piper’s dad. At this rate, he was pretty worried his own skull would crack, too. “Then all three of us switched to a different school. Then I was gone for a while.”

Tristan nodded like this made perfect sense, though he mostly seemed lost in thought. That was a little rude, in Leo’s opinion. If he went through all that effort to remember their elaborate setup of lies, the least Piper’s dad could do was appreciate it!

“I’m glad you’re here now, with everything that’s happened. Piper was really upset when you left,” Tristan said, still with that faraway look in his eyes. “The last few months were hard for her. Between the move and the breakup, she really could have used a friend.”

Leo promptly lost all rights to make fun of Piper’s dad and his vegetable chopping skills because at the word ‘breakup’, the knife slipped and he nearly sliced off two of his fingers.

“Fuck! Ow!” he said eloquently, trying to avoid bleeding all over the cutting board in his attempt to get to the sink. “Jason and Piper broke up?”

The question sounded absurd even to his own ears. Why would Jason and Piper break up? They’d been happy together.

Surely, Piper’s dad had to be talking about something else.

To Leo’s shock, Tristan nodded.

“A while ago, yes,” he said, but he didn’t go into details—possibly because Leo was bleeding all over the sink. “We should bandage that. Do you think you need stitches?”

“No, the cuts aren’t that deep,” Leo decided, turning on the faucet and holding his bleeding hand under the stream of cold water. Maybe he should have been more concerned about the injury, but his mind was still whirring at the thought of his best friends breaking up. Unfortunately, the cold water stung like hell. He hissed with pain. “Sorry for making your kitchen look like a crime scene right after moving in. Usually, I at least have the decency to wait a day or two.”

Because the house was a small, cozy place and Leo had not had the decency to curse quietly, Piper appeared in the doorway a moment later, an alarmed expression on her face.

“What happened?”

“I’ve been bested by a stupid potato,” Leo cursed, holding up his bleeding hand and wiggling his fingers for emphasis. He figured out immediately that this was a mistake. “Ow.”

“Stop that, dumbass!” Piper cursed, moving to stand beside him. “Sink was the right call, but you need to use soap or the cuts could get infected. Dad, any chance we have gauze lying around somewhere?”

Tristan didn’t seem to question why his daughter had immediately jumped into emergency medical treatment mode. He just abandoned the cutting board and headed for the front door.

“Not exactly sure what box our regular medical supplies are in, but I’ll get the first aid kit from the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Do we have to do the soap?” Leo whined, because fuck, that stung, but Piper nodded with a scary expression on her face, so he complied. “How do you even know this stuff? Are we sure you’re not secretly an Apollo kid?”

“I know this stuff because I’m friends with a bunch of morons who have zero sense of self-preservation,” Piper cursed, gritting her teeth. “You shouldn’t be around knives when you’re this distracted.”

“I can usually cook just fine when I’m distracted. Your dad was the one who told me you and Jason broke up in the middle of this stupid potato,” Leo said defensively. “Is that the Mist messing with him?”

That was the only explanation his mind had supplied so far that made any sense to him.

Piper shook her head. “We really did break up. That was a few months ago.”

Leo felt his jaw hit the floor. 

“What the hell happened? You were together for ages. I thought- you always seemed so happy.”

“I know, but-” Piper broke off abruptly when her dad came back inside with the first aid kit. Demigod stuff, then?

Leo’s mind was racing. The breakup was a completely stupid thing to focus on, considering everything that had happened in the last few days. He knew that.

But it was easier to try and make sense of this than it was to try and make sense of the fact that Jason was gone and he’d never get to see him again.

“Is it alright if we do this somewhere else?” Piper asked her dad, taking the first aid kit from him.

“Of course. It might be easier to patch him up when you’re both sitting down, anyway.” He turned towards Leo. “Thank you for your help, but I think I can take it from here.”

Leo sent a silent prayer to whichever deity was responsible for protecting vegetables—Demeter, probably?—and gave what he hoped was an encouraging thumbs up with his uninjured hand before he followed Piper into the hallway to presumably be reprimanded some more.

~~~~ They ended up sitting on an old bed that looked like it had lived a long, miserable life and was excited for retirement, but the wooden frame thankfully didn’t break down under the weight of the new mattress or the additional weight of them sitting on said mattress. Piper explained that this had been her dad’s room when he’d lived here as a child, and that it would probably become her room now. Then she went very quiet and focused on bandaging his hand, clearly avoiding looking at him.

“It wasn’t because of me, was it?” Leo asked. The thought made him feel ill. “Please tell me it wasn’t something like, I don’t know, you two being unable to stand being around each other after what happened to me. I think I’d actually have to blow myself up again if it was.”

He tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn’t feel like one at all. The thought that he'd managed to ruin his best friends’ relationship on top of everything else made it hard to breathe.

When Piper shook her head, it felt like a whole boulder was lifted off his shoulders.

“I actually think we would have broken up sooner if you hadn’t gone missing. We leaned on each other a lot after you disappeared. It wasn’t until we realized we wouldn’t find you and things started to settle down a little that I had time to think. And when I did…” Her voice went very quiet, and she still didn’t look up at him. “I realized I wasn’t happy in the relationship. I don’t think I ever was.”

“How did I not know that?” Leo wondered quietly. “I just… you two seemed happy to me. What kind of garbage best friend am I?”

Piper shook her head. “It isn’t your fault. I was telling myself I was happy for a long time. It’s almost- sometimes I wonder if I was charmspeaking myself. That maybe I kept saying I was in love with Jason until I convinced myself I actually was. And with Hera and my mom setting it up… I love-” her voice caught in her throat, and Leo felt like maybe he needed to throw up, “-loved Jason, but not like that.”

“Pipes, I’m really sorry.” Leo squeezed her shoulder. “That sounds like it was super hard for both of you.” Leo felt awful about the fact that he hadn’t even been around to comfort either of them, but it wasn’t like he could fix it now. It was just another item on Leo’s unending list of epic screwups he’d never be able to make up for.

“Jason was… well, he took it exactly like I expected him to. He was surprised, but he didn’t get angry or anything. He mostly seemed okay. Part of me wonders if maybe…” But whatever Piper had been thinking about, she seemed to decide it wasn’t important. “It was hard to get a proper read on him, and as nice as he was about it, things were still super awkward after. I'm terrified he died thinking I didn’t care about him.”

And then she was tearing up again, and Leo thought he would shatter if she cried. 

“He knew you cared,” he said as earnestly as he could manage, pulling Piper to his chest again. “You love way too annoyingly for him not to have known. Hell, even I know you love me, and we both know I’m a fucking nightmare when it comes to this stuff.”

“I missed you so much,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his back like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Oh, I’m about to make you regret saying that,” Leo said, forcing himself to smile. “I’ll bring it up each and every time you say you find something I do annoying.”

“You’re annoying as hell, but you’re still my best friend.” He could feel her tears dripping onto his shoulder, and he knew that would make him start up again too. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you.”

And well, passing away from dehydration after crying too much would be a really lame way to die the second time, but everything was just too much right now, so if that was how he went, Leo wasn’t sure anyone could blame him.

~~~~

For the next couple of weeks, Leo stayed.

Helping Piper and her dad unpack was the perfect way to keep himself occupied and not have to think. Usually, a mundane task like this probably would have driven Leo nuts. But right now, it was a bit of a godsend—if not literally, at least figuratively. Being productive was always so much easier when it was done in order to avoid something you wanted to do even less. There was a reason his spaces in the foster homes had only ever been tidy when he had exams coming up.

He helped cook, too, and Piper’s dad became increasingly less garbage at it the longer this went on—like muscle memory was finally kicking in after years of disuse.

It was mostly good—listening to Piper reminisce about trips she’d taken with her dad and where she’d gotten the weird variety of items she kept in her room. When they weren’t unpacking, Leo and Piper played video games or watched movies or explored the area. Twice, during the night, they took Festus on a little flight to a nearby fast food place. Finding a parking spot was a bit of a nightmare, unfortunately. Leo would submit a complaint about their inability to accommodate celestial bronze dragons the first chance he got.

The first time they tried hiking—Leo didn’t even like hiking, he’d spent enough time outside for several lifetimes, why did he do this to himself—they got hopelessly lost in the woods, and of course, due to demigod bullshit, neither of them had brought a phone, so Google Maps wasn’t an option. It was probably for the better. The last thing that situation needed on top of them being lost was a monster attack. 

They were already jokingly planning out their new life in the woods when, thankfully, a girl their age came to their rescue.

“A human being! Thank the gods. The squirrels weren’t talking to us,” Leo greeted her, which had Piper shout “Please ignore Leo!” loudly from the branches of the tree she’d been climbing.

The girl lifted her head, spotted Piper and promptly burst out laughing.

“What in the world are you doing up there?” 

“Trying to get a better vantage point,” Piper sighed, making her way back down the tree. “We’re hopelessly lost.”

“Well, nice to meet you, hopelessly lost. I’m Shel,” the girl said, still grinning. Leo decided immediately that he liked her.

Piper had almost made it back down when she somehow missed a branch and fell the rest of the way. In comedic movie fashion, Shel moved before Leo had the chance to and caught her mid-tumble. “That was a bit of a dramatic way to get my attention, but you’re cute, so I’ll allow it.”

“Oh yeah, Piper’s got a bit of a thing with falling for people that way,” Leo commented, and Piper gave him her most murderous look while she got back on her feet.

“You guys need help getting back?”

“Please, yes,” Piper said immediately. “It turns out we’re both garbage with maps.”

“Maybe you just need a tour guide next time,” Shel suggested, winking at Piper, whose face turned scarlet. Leo wasn’t even mad about being the third wheel for once. He’d give her so much shit about this later.

And he did. And then Piper properly came out to him—no label or anything, mostly as extremely confused but sure she liked girls, which also made a few additional pieces click into place regarding her breakup with Jason. She ended her anxiety-riddled explanation by thanking Leo for being so normal and annoying about all this. 

Which was how Leo realized he’d apparently never told Piper he was bi.

Or maybe he had, and it had gotten lost along with their other memories of Wilderness. Stupid memory-stealing babysitters.

Well, at least they got to hug about it now. 

~~~~

It was strange how normal some days felt when nothing would ever truly be normal again. When in every moment Leo and Piper spent together, the gaping hole that had been ripped into their trio was so blatantly obvious.

The benefit and problem of this friendship was that Leo and Piper were both experts at not talking about things they were struggling with. 

This wasn’t exactly news. From what little Leo did remember of Wilderness School, they’d spent months not talking about his mom, or about the fact that Piper’s dad kept canceling their weekend plans. They’d both known there were things left unsaid, but as long as they’d been able to cheer each other up, that hadn’t really mattered. It made sense, honestly. Put two people who hadn’t had a shoulder to cry on for ages in a room together and see what happens!

Right now, this meant they were expertly ignoring the box of belongings Piper had picked up from Jason’s school. It had been pushed so far under the bed during that first night that it was no longer visible, and neither of them made any effort to move it out of its new home since. They ignored the topic of Jason, period, until it inevitably hit them in the face again. 

It was mostly dumb shit that set them off. Piper automatically reaching for vanilla ice cream at the grocery store because it was Jason’s favorite—seriously, who in their right mind even liked vanilla ice cream?

Sometimes, Leo would make a joke and burst into tears instead of laughing because he knew it would have cracked Jason up. They found old photos unpacking. One time, Piper’s dad suggested they make tacos and they started simultaneously bawling their eyes out.

Leo had spent a long time exactly like this—pretending everything was normal and okay when it wasn’t either of those things until he inevitably broke down. Then he’d started to actually feel sort of okay whenever he was with Jason and Piper. Now, he was sure he would spend the rest of his life pretending.

His appetite was too used to being stuck in survival mode for him to bow to nausea for long, so he went back to eating properly after a few days. He still cried himself to sleep most nights. He kept dreaming about Jason. The memories wrapped themselves around him like a safety blanket that he knew would get ripped away again in the morning. He always woke up feeling empty. Sometimes, he wished he could just go to sleep and never wake up again.

But other than that, it was mostly good.

Then demigod communications went back up, and everything went to hell.

———

Chapter notes:

Fun fact! I originally planned for this chapter (as well as the next few chapters) to just be backstory in my head and for me to maybe do a flashback or two. Unfortunately for me, Piper McLean waltzed into the room and refused to leave.

I do actually think the fic works better this way, but it will take a second to get to the plot! Hopefully you’ll enjoy the whole journey :)

I may not be able to have Leo and Piper go to Jason’s funeral without seriously messing with the plot of Tyrant’s Tomb, but I could at least pick the most evil reason possible for them not to go!

Side note: I sort of forgot that Hedge and Mellie were supposed to be here according to TBM, but by the time I remembered I already had this chapter written out and, as someone who cannot be bothered to figure out how to write them, I decided to just leave it. ToA is vaguely canon to this universe, but only for the most part. Some details are inaccurate, and I think that’s okay.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading! Comments and reblogs super, super appreciated as always!!

Chapter 14: The goddess of ghosts gets traumatized by a hug

Leo felt like he was going to have a panic attack. He tried to look away from the shimmering form of his mother, but he couldn’t. How could he possibly have looked anywhere else?

His mom just stood there, frozen in shock, staring right at him.

He couldn’t take this. He couldn’t take seeing her. Couldn’t take hearing what she thought of him after what he’d done to her.

“Mijo? Is it really you?” the shade asked, and it hit Leo right in the chest. It was his mom’s voice—trembling and fragile but definitely hers. He knew it in an instant, even after eight years without her. 

Some of the memories had faded with time—become harder and harder to grasp at. Leo had been terribly afraid that one day, the memory of her voice would fade completely. That the version of it he sometimes heard in his dreams would stray further and further from the real thing until he could no longer remember it.

Hearing it again, so foreign after all this time, yet so agonizingly familiar, was enough to reduce him to tears all over again.

So much suddenly came back to him, clear and sharp as broken glass.

“This isn’t real,” he told himself. He could barely remember how to take in air. “This isn’t her. Whatever horrible things she’s about to say to me, it isn’t really my mom saying them. It’s just the stupid goddess messing with my head.”

He wasn’t sure that was true. Melinoe was the goddess of ghosts. Who was to say she couldn’t have summoned his mother from Asphodel? Of course she could have.

And honestly, Leo wasn’t even sure it mattered whether this was really his mom. If this shade continued speaking in her voice, telling him all the things he’d quietly thought to himself over the years in his worst moments, it would destroy him anyway. 

Leo desperately wanted to run away. He couldn’t face his mom. Not after what he’d done. But even if it hadn’t been for his stupid broken ankle, his trembling body would not obey him. He’d spent so long running from this pain, and now it was staring right at him, and Leo couldn’t move. 

The ghostly form of his mom moved towards him with wide eyes, and he braced himself for whatever it was she would say or do. For her cussing him out and saying she hated him for making her die in agony. He deserved it. He-

“Oh cariño. Come here.” She dropped her ghostly screwdriver, which did the reasonable thing and evaporated. Then she kneeled down beside him, strong arms wrapping tenderly around his shoulders. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She felt so impossibly warm, and she smelled exactly like he remembered—machine oil mixing with the subtle scent of the apple shampoo she’d always used. 

Later, he’d think how odd it was that she hadn’t been cold like the ghosts he’d passed through before, but right now, Leo wasn’t doing a whole lot of thinking. His brain had lost all capacity for it. He didn’t understand what was happening.

“Mamá?” he asked, his voice breaking. The woman looked and sounded and felt just like her. It was impossible to believe that it could be anyone else, as much as he kept telling himself this couldn’t be real. Melinoe was messing with him. In a second, the illusion would break and he would die. But that didn’t make sense with how the ghost was acting. Why was she holding him? “Aren’t you angry?”

“Why would I be angry?” the shade asked gently, in the voice his mom had always used when he’d said something terribly silly. “You’ve grown so tall, Emilio.”

And that—the full name that Leo hadn’t allowed anyone to use in years because it never sounded quite like it had when his mamá had said it and he was terrified of forgetting how she had said it if he let other voices overwrite the memory—was finally enough to break Leo. He shattered into a million pieces.

Leo let himself deflate against his mom, arms wrapping around her sides and holding her close. He may not have deserved it, but he still sank into her embrace and started sobbing uncontrollably.

This really was his mom. And she was holding him, arms wrapped around him and one cheek pressed to his. 

If this was how he went, maybe that wasn’t so bad.

“Lo siento,” he said through tears, chest heaving. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for everything.”

“Oh, Leo.” She just held him tighter. One hand gently cupped his head, fingers gently combing through his curls like she’d done so many times when he’d been small. The other ran soothingly up and down his back. “What could you possibly have to feel sorry for?” 

Leo’s stomach flipped. Maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe she had known, but didn’t remember. Maybe Asphodel had made her forget, and that was the only reason she wasn’t angry with him.

That had to be it. There was no possible way she’d be holding him like this if she knew what had happened.

“I caused the machine shop fire,” he said frantically, because he couldn’t let himself have this. Not after everything. She deserved the truth, no matter how desperately he longed for her to hold him like this forever. “I lost control, just like you said I would, and I- I killed you.”

“Cariño, look at me.” His mom took his face in her hands, gently wiping his tears away. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But-” Leo started to protest.

His mom didn’t even let him finish.

“No, Leo. Escúchame. It was not your fault,” she repeated firmly. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head and then she just held him again, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, mi sol. There is nothing to forgive.”

She still said the nickname with the same easy fondness of his childhood. She looked at him with those same shining eyes, her smile never wavering. Slowly, she returned to rubbing his back. Her fingers tapped out a familiar rhythm in Morse code as she did. 

I love you. I love you. I love you. 

Over and over. Never wavering.

Leo couldn’t get a single word out. He spent the next several minutes curled up against his mom’s chest, bawling like a baby. He’d tried to tell himself it wasn’t his fault so many times. Other people had told him that, too. He’d tried to blame Gaia. Really, he had. And for a while, that had worked. But there had always been that small, vicious voice at the back of his head, reminding him that it had been his fire that killed her. 

And yet here she was, holding him gently, telling him it hadn’t been his fault. Looking at him like she genuinely believed it.

For the first time in almost nine years, Leo felt like he could breathe.

@coquettemouseevil What had happened would never be okay, but he could feel some of his broken pieces mend themselves as her scarred, calloused hands pressed tenderly into his shirt.

He remembered how she’d gotten some of these scars. The first time he’d burnt in front of his mom, he’d anxiously melted a hole into the living room carpet. He’d been small—kindergarten age, maybe. Younger than he’d been when Hera had coaxed the flames out of him. He remembered being really overwhelmed, though he couldn’t remember what had made him feel that way. Then, suddenly, his hands had started smoking.

His mother had looked at him with such fear, then. Even after Hera’s bullshit demonstration with the furnace, she’d been so afraid the fire was hurting him.

Without as much as a hint of hesitation on her face, she’d reached out and cupped his burning palm in her own hands and tried to smother the flames.

She hadn’t been afraid of him. Not even a little. She’d only ever been afraid for him.

He’d burnt her, leaving a scar that never quite healed. He hadn’t understood, then, why the flames would hurt her when they couldn’t harm him.

He remembered crying. He remembered being held and soothed like he was right now, not a single angry word between them. 

There is nothing in this world that could ever make me love you less, entiendes? she’d asked as she’d rocked him gently against her chest.

And he had. He’d understood, at that age, when he was young and naive, before he’d learned that love could be conditional. He remembered it now, knowing unconditional love to be the rare and precious thing it was, and he wept uncontrollably.

As a child, Leo had let himself be loved so easily. He’d almost forgotten how that felt—to just believe he was loved, without doubt or question. Without feeling like it must be a mistake on the other person’s part that they’d fix once he messed up badly enough. To feel like being himself was enough to deserve that love.

“Sorry.” Leo sniffed. “Here I am, all grown up, and you still have to deal with me wailing like a toddler.”

“You’ve been so, so very strong for so long.” She pressed another kiss to his head. “You don’t need to be strong now.“

“Damn it, mom, now I’m never gonna stop.” 

“Now, I know I did not teach you that language, mijo,” she teased, raising an eyebrow at him, and then Leo was laughing through his sobs.

“I love you so much.” He wiped at his eyes, slowly untangling himself from her so he could get a proper look at her. He still didn’t understand how any of this was possible. “How are you here? What was Melinoe trying to do? I’m so confused.”

The goddess of ghosts had promised to destroy him. This was… kind of the complete opposite of that. It made no sense to him.

His mom laughed. His chest stung at the sound. He hadn’t heard her laugh in such a long time. 

“Technically, I’m possessing her. This was her intention. She summoned me for this exact purpose. She just thought she would be able to control me.”

“I- what?” Leo blinked. The thought that his mom was possessing a goddess seemed absurd to him. And considering he had been possessed in the past, he’d assumed he was basically an expert on the topic. “Why would she want to be possessed?” 

Personally, he’d give that experience a solid 0/10. It wasn’t something he’d ever have considered subjecting himself to willingly.

“Melinoe cannot keep the memories of all of us in her mind at once. Even for a goddess, that would be too much. There are simply too many of us. She needs to call upon ghosts to use them against their loved ones. She does this by handing over her form and amplifying our negative emotions.”

“So why didn’t it work on you?” 

“I suppose she assumed I’d be an easy target, with how haunted you were by my death. She thought wrong.” His mom grinned at him, looking incredibly smug. “She tried to target my anger and didn’t find any. Then she tried to twist my worry into something painful. Foolish woman. Like I’d ever let anything outweigh the love I have for you.”

Her hands were still wandering up and down his arms, rubbing them soothingly.

“But- but how are you-” No demigod Leo knew could have done what she was doing, as far as he was aware. And his mom was mortal.

She should not have been able to fight a goddess and win.

“I’ve been dealing with godly nonsense since before you were born. See through the Mist long enough and you learn to handle these things.” 

She shrugged, like fighting a goddess was merely a minor inconvenience if it stood in the way of seeing him. 

“You’re like Rachel. You’re clear-sighted,” Leo realized, a lot of things about his childhood suddenly clicking into place. “You knew who Tía Callida was, didn’t you?”

His mom replied with a string of very colorful curse words, both English and Spanish, several of which Leo had definitely never heard before. With how his life was going, he’d have to write those down for future use.

“Blasted woman. I never wanted her training you. But yes, I’m very aware I banished the queen of the gods from our apartment.” His mom cracked her knuckles. “The goddess of ghosts had absolutely no idea who she was dealing with.”

Leo hiccuped, a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I have the coolest mom in the entire universe.”

“I clearly got the coolest son, so I think that balances it out.” Her eyes were crinkled and so full of genuine love that Leo thought his heart might burst. “I knew what you’d face since you were very small. I hated that I couldn’t protect you from becoming a hero. But worried as I was, I was always happy as long as I had you. Nothing will ever change that. Not my death, and certainly not some vindictive goddess.”

Leo sniffled. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t grow up to be a very good hero,” he said quietly.

“I don’t believe that for a second.” His mom’s hands had returned to combing soothingly through his curls as she spoke. “Don’t be so terribly hard on yourself.”

“I’m not. I’m just being honest. I failed everyone. And now I’m never going to be able to fix any of it.” 

“Emilio, we talked about this,” his mom said, a touch of sternness in her voice. “Nothing is unfixable.”

“I-” Leo’s protests were swallowed by a wave of white-hot pain. He did his best to bite back a scream, though he was sure the pain must have been written all over his face. He’d been so lost in the blissful feeling of being held by his mom that, for a little while, the agony of his stupid ankle injury had faded to background noise. But he’d shifted his leg now, and it had immediately retaliated. 

His mom’s eyes widened in alarm. “You’re hurt.”

“I think- argh- I think I broke my ankle.” The words came out strangled. Leo was trembling like a leaf. He was so warm and so cold and so dizzy. “Mamá, I don’t feel so good.”

“Oh, my poor baby. You’re going to be okay.” She stroked his tear-stained cheek with her thumb. “Will you let me take a look?”

Leo nodded weakly. 

She took off her jacket, and unlike with the vanishing act her screwdriver had put on the second she’d let go of it, the jacket stayed corporeal as she wrapped it around his shaking shoulders. 

Leo remembered that jacket. It had been his mom’s favorite—despite the wear and tear it showed from years of her wearing it around the workshop, or maybe because of it. It had mismatching patches all over it from all the times she’d had to fix it over the years.

He remembered the last time he’d been wrapped up in it as a feverish little seven year old. He’d been drowning in it, then. He wasn’t anymore. But the fabric still felt exactly the same.

His mom carefully lowered him onto the soft sand. 

“Do you have any medical supplies? Anything you could take to ease the pain?” she asked, brushing a curl out of his face. It didn’t sound like she was overly optimistic about the answer she’d receive—probably because the only place Leo could be stashing anything was his tool belt, and that obviously wasn’t a common place for first aid supplies to be. “We’ll make do if you don’t.”

“I- I do, actually.” He gestured towards his tool belt. “Just ask for whatever you need. It’s meant to be used for summoning tools and workshop supplies, obviously, but it can usually do bandages and stuff.”

His mom’s eyes went wide. “You have a magical tool belt?”

“I have a magical tool belt,” Leo confirmed, smiling weakly. 

“Damn, I wish I’d had something like this when I first opened the shop. That sounds really convenient and doesn’t look nearly as heavy to lug around as my actual tool belt.”

“Between this and your very imaginative description of Hera: so much for not being the one to teach me to curse, eh?” Leo joked, and his mom burst out laughing.

“Do not get cheeky with me, mijo,” she teased, and that had him laughing, too.

The whole situation was so utterly absurd that he had to pinch himself just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. But he didn’t wake. Esperanza Valdez was really sitting here, laughing with him. His mom was right here next to him, and she loved him, and there was nothing to forgive.

~~~~

His mom spent the next few minutes thoroughly wrecking Leo’s right boot using a pair of heavy-duty scissors. 

It had refused to come off the normal way—which Leo didn’t really blame it for, considering everything he’d put that poor boot through—so it was coming off the hard way. Luckily, it was already pretty ruined, which made things a little easier.

Leo spent that time just kind of laying there, watching his mom as she worked. Her brows were furrowed in worry and concentration, and every now and again she let out a frustrated huff, scowling at the boot and/or the scissors like they had caused her personal offense.

“They’re very tough boots,” she sighed, and Leo groaned inwardly.

“Yeah. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The ambrosia cube he was nibbling on tasted like the chicken pozole his mom had always made him when he was sick, which felt accurate to the current situation and almost made him burst into tears all over again. Gods, he was a wreck right now. 

“Will you tell me what happened?” she asked after she’d spent a while working in silence. “Why do you think you’re failing everyone?”

“It’s kind of a long, awful story with a lot of colossal screw-ups on my part,” Leo mumbled, not meeting her eyes.

“I don’t care if it’s long. We have time. Dime, por favor.”

He couldn’t tell her no. Not if she asked like that. There was no way in hell.

“I- After you died, things were really bad for a long time.” He wrung his hands. “But then I met Piper and Jason, and everything changed.”

Leo wasn’t sure how long he spent recounting everything that had happened. He knew he spent much of that time crying. His mom listened with a soft expression that was occasionally disturbed by her need to cuss out some deity or monster he'd encountered. 

She set and bandaged his ankle, which hurt like absolute hell. She cleaned the cuts on his arms and the bloody gash on his cheek that must have been parting gifts he’d gotten from the trees while frantically trying to get out of Asphodel. 

Once that was done, she made him drink some water and moved to sit behind him, cradling his head in her lap the way she had after that stupid modified swing incident when he’d been little.

Leo kept talking. Once he wasn’t feeling quite so dizzy anymore, he made himself sit up so he could crawl back into his mom’s lap. The world was awful and everything hurt, but his mom was right there, holding him, and a tiny, foolish part of him genuinely believed that meant he was going to be alright.

~~~~

“-and now Jason is dead, and I really hurt Piper, and I’m never going to be able to make things right,” he finished, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his borrowed jacket. 

“Shhhh. Shhh. Everything is going to be okay.” His mom squeezed his shoulders gently. “Oh, my wonderful, brave boy. I’m so proud of you.”

“But I just told you-” Leo started to protest. Once again, his mom didn’t let him finish.

“-how you saved the world? Yeah, I’d say that warrants a bit of pride from your mamá. Wouldn’t you?” She nudged him, smiling earnestly. “I wish things hadn’t been so hard for you. I hate that I couldn’t be around to protect you for longer. But it sounds like you’ve found friends that love and protect you in my place. Despite everything you’ve had to face, the world is still in one piece. And here you are, alive. I couldn’t be prouder, cariño.”

Yeah, Leo was pretty sure he’d cry himself to serious dehydration at this rate.

“I don’t feel particularly proud or brave right now.”

“Being brave has never meant that you aren’t afraid. I would be terrified to face even a fraction of the things you’ve stood against. But you don’t seem to let that stop you. You’re still standing, and still fighting for your friend. That’s the bravest thing in the world—if a little more reckless than I’d like.”

“I guess.” Leo let the words wash over him and let himself deflate against his mom again. He hadn’t even realized just how much he needed to hear this. “Though I don’t know about the whole standing thing, considering my whole broken ankle situation,” he joked weakly. The bandages and the ambrosia had helped, but it still hurt. He seriously doubted he’d be able to put weight on it again anytime soon. “I don’t really know what to do now.”

“Yes, you do.” His mother’s voice was kind, but there was a firmness to it now that brooked no opposition. “You know exactly what you came here to do.”

“I can’t save Jason. It doesn’t matter that I want to. I’ll never make it to Hades’ palace. Hell, even if I did, why would Jason follow me?” Leo asked, his heart aching. “I’d just get us lost or eaten or take a wrong turn somewhere and land us both in Tartarus. I always mess everything up.”

“The thing about being an inventor,” his mom told him, cradling him against her chest and pressing a kiss to his hairline, “is that your projects are going to blow up in your face half the time. You make a mistake somewhere in the process, and nothing works the way you wanted it to, and sometimes you really just want to throw the whole thing out of a window and never look at it again. Remember that drill-bit design I was working on?”

“Of course I do.”

“I saved most of the cussing for when you were at school, but dios mío, you wouldn’t believe how many times I started over because it didn’t work the way I intended.” His mom laughed. “The important thing isn’t that you never mess up, mijo. Messing up is a normal part of the process. What’s important is that after you’ve cursed and cried and maybe thrown your unfortunate project at the wall a few times, you pick up the pieces and you keep trying.” 

“Well, I’ve got the cursing and crying and throwing things at a wall covered.” Leo sniffled. Gods, there weren’t enough words in all the languages of the world to convey just how much he loved his mom.

“Of course you do. I think we’ve got a Valdez family patent on it somewhere.” She pinched his cheek and smiled at him. “So, what do you want to do now? Think you’re ready to try and pick up the pieces?”

“Maybe.” He rubbed at his tear-stained cheeks. “Will you tell me what to do?”

She shook her head. 

“Absolutely not. No more training wheels. I’m just the assistant today.” She ruffled his hair. “Take a moment to breathe, and then tell me what you’re thinking. How do you want to solve this? Because I know you can.”

And really, now that Leo wasn’t in the middle of a devastated breakdown and the pain had ebbed a little, thinking wasn’t quite as hard. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe he did know how to move forward.

He took a deep breath and tried for a proper smile. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

~~~~

A few minutes later, he’d arranged all the tools and materials he thought he might need neatly on a tarp in front of them.

Even without catastrophizing about how everything he did was inevitably going to end in horrible failure, Leo knew that walking as much as a few steps on his messed-up ankle would be a challenge. A track halfway across the desert? Yeah, that wasn’t happening. 

He needed something to take the weight off it. He dithered between crutches and a cane for a moment, but a cane was the obvious choice. Crutches may have been better to keep all weight off his ankle, but he wasn’t sure how practical it would be to have all his weight on mobility aids when he was walking in sand that might slip underneath them without him realizing, and he also much preferred the thought of having one hand free in case he needed to use his fire to protect himself.

Since there would be some weight on his ankle, he also needed a way to stabilize it so he didn’t make the injury even worse. He needed some kind of ankle brace.

Both the cane and the brace were more of the medical than the engineering variety and therefore outside of his usual field of expertise, but Leo had figured out how to reconstruct a celestial bronze dragon almost from scratch and built a giant flying warship in six months. This was far from his most ambitious project. He could do this.

His mother didn’t correct him or give any advice on how he could improve the brace. She just listened to him, handing over tools and parts and snacks, like he’d done for her when he’d been little. It felt weird to have the roles reversed like this, but not in a bad way. 

While they worked, his mom asked him to tell her more stories about his friends—not of their heroics, but tiny, casual adventures they’d had together. Good moments. Leo was more than happy to provide. Thinking about all the ways he’d messed up was still painful, but the pain wasn’t as biting now. And besides, he wanted his mom to know about his friends.

He talked about the food fights, and Jason with half-melted marshmallows stuck in his hair. He talked about the movie nights and the campfire and Jason cheering him up in the sewer. He talked about Piper and the Wilderness school pranks he could remember. He joked about her absolutely abhorrent pronunciation from when he’d tried to help her with her Spanish homework, and about the time they’d bickered and capsized a boat in the lake because they’d both leaned out too far out in an attempt to splash each other. 

He also got to show his mom the Polaroid picture of him, Jason and Piper that he’d pulled out of the Styx. It wasn’t a real memory, obviously, but that way she could see what they looked like, which was at least one thing that particular traumatizing experience had been good for.

Then, he talked about the remaining crew of the Argo—about Hazel’s connection to their family and Frank turning into an iguana to get out of a finger trap and late night engineer/architect arguments with Annabeth. He talked about how Percy had immediately been down to yell at the gods with him.

He talked about his siblings back at camp, and about Emmie and Jo taking him in. 

After all the bad things Asphodel had shown him, remembering the good was exactly what he needed.

The whole time he was talking, his mom was smiling so widely that it made his heart squeeze in his chest.

“That sounds like a wonderful life you’ve got, mijo. I hate that I can’t be there to see it, but it sounds like you are so, so loved. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

And he was, wasn’t he? He hadn’t polished the story for his mom. All these things really had happened. He really did have that many people who cared about him, despite everything.

“I’m not sure I deserve it,” Leo admitted quietly. “I’m not sure I deserve any of them.”

“Of course you do. You deserve every single good thing you have in your life, mi sol.” His mother handed him a screwdriver so he could fasten the support structure around the padding of his makeshift brace, then gently squeezed his shoulder. “But you’ve been through so much, and I know that me saying this isn’t going to magically change the way you see yourself, no matter how much I wish it did. The only thing I can give you is this: at the end of the day, we do not get to decide whether other people love us. I felt like I was failing you so many times when you were growing up. But you still hugged me goodnight every evening before bed.”

“Mamá, you weren’t- that wasn’t-” Leo stopped what he was doing and hugged her again. “Te quiero. You were the best parent I ever could have wished for.”

“You deserved a better life than I was able to give you,” she said simply, squeezing his shoulders. “But you still love me. Your friends seem wonderful. I have a feeling they will love you regardless of whether you think you deserve it. The only thing you get to decide here is whether you continue to shut your eyes to this fact or face their love with your eyes and heart wide open.”

Leo sat with that for a very long time.

~~~~

When they surveyed the end result, his mom glowed with obvious pride.

“Look at this. You did so well.”

The tools weren’t anything fancy—it was just a padded boot and a relatively simple cane made partially out of a branch from one of Asphodel’s trees—but while they were much less impressive projects than Festus and the Argo II had been, they were functional, and that was what mattered most right now. Besides, he’d made them with his mom. How could he do anything other than love them?

“We’ve always made a great team,” Leo said, grinning.

His mom shook her head.

“This was all you, cariño.” She smiled at him. “I just gave you the tools.”

She helped him fasten the brace around his ankle and stood when he did. He leaned heavily on the cane for support. 

“Wow, I am so glad you got to see me live all the way to 80,” he joked as he tested his grip on the cane.

Putting weight on his ankle didn’t feel great, but it wasn’t awful, either. It was a world away from how he’d felt after stumbling out of Asphodel.

His mother laughed, her eyes glinting. “You always loved making people laugh when you were little. I’m glad to see that hasn’t changed.” 

The unabashed joy in her expression made tears prick at the corners of Leo’s eyes again.

“Oh, it definitely hasn’t. My sense of humor drives Piper absolutely nuts sometimes, but Jason always, always laughed, even at my really terrible jokes.”

His mom nudged him gently. “Marry that one, yeah?”

Leo did shed a few more tears, then. This feeling—his mom seeing and loving all of him, unconditionally, without hesitation—had the power to crack him wide open.

“Resurrection first. I can still get rejected after,” he joked back, but this time his mom didn’t laugh. She pinched his cheek, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“Don’t sell yourself so terribly short, mijo. There’s so much to love about you.” She ruffled his hair, then inspected his brace and cane with a critical eye. “So, what are we thinking?”

Leo tested taking a few steps. It still hurt, but not too badly. He’d dealt with worse before. “Not bad. I think this just might work.”

“Good.” His mom was still smiling, but it seemed strained now. “Because I fear it might be time for me to go. I may be pretty great, but there’s limits to how long I can possess a goddess without my soul coming apart. It’s honestly a miracle she’s tolerated me being here for as long as she has.”

The smile slid off Leo’s face. 

“No.” He moved forward and grabbed onto his mother’s arms like the desperate child he was. “I just got you back. I can’t lose you again.”

“I can’t stay. But you will never truly lose me.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “I will always be right here, Emilio.”

“Can I stay here with you?” he asked, feeling himself coming apart at the seams all over again. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t sure he’d ever remember how to make the tears stop if she left him a second time.

“What kind of mother would I be if I told you yes, hm?” she said gently, looking right at him. “You have a life waiting for you out there, with your second family. Go and live it. The last thing I want is for you to stay in the shadow of my ghost.”

The words hit Leo right in his chest as he realized how much he had been doing just that—how much of his life had been centered around the fact that he hadn’t been able to save his mom, and how even the smallest sign of failure meant he obviously wouldn’t be able to save anyone else, either.

“But what if I- what if I can’t keep trying? What if I can’t save Jason and never make it back to my friends?” He kept clinging to her, like that might keep her soul pinned in place. “I need you. Please.”

“Of course you’ll make it. You have all the tools you need right here.” His mom smiled at him, gently tapping his head. She was still glowing with what he knew to be pride as she brushed his curls out of his face. One of her hands remained on his cheek. “My bright, capable boy. Look at everything that is already behind you. You’ve beaten more impossible odds than this, haven’t you?”

Her ghostly form started to flicker, and Leo realized neither of them could do anything to stop this. It was just happening. His mom was going back to Asphodel. They got no say in the matter.

He couldn’t waste his final moments with her trying to stop something that was entirely out of his control. Not again.

“Will you be okay in Asphodel?” he asked. As scared as he was of her answer, he needed to know. “It seemed terrifying to me, and I wasn’t even there for very long. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to be in pain.”

“I’m not in pain, te lo prometo. Asphodel is not what you think. I do not dread returning there. But I’m so grateful I got to see the person you’ve become. You’re everything I always knew and hoped you would be.” His mom pressed one more kiss to the top of his head. “Mijo, te quiero y siempre te querré. Now go save your friend. And please, let yourself be loved.”

Leo looked at her flickering form, trying to commit her features to memory. Her gentle smile and kind eyes. The dimple on her chin and the way her nose scrunched up when she was thinking. Some of her hair had come loose from her braid as they’d worked, the dark curls hanging partially in her face now, and he tried to memorize that, too.

Then he pulled her into his arms for the final time, wishing desperately he could keep her right there forever. Trying to soak in the way her arms felt around him, the way her chin felt gently pressed against the top of his head. Clinging to the once-familiar smell of motor oil and apple shampoo. Trying to keep however much of his mother he could, and trying to learn how to let her go at the same time.

“Te quiero,” he said, again and again and again, because if this was the last time he ever saw her, he wanted to get his final words to her right this time. He kept saying it, like a desperate prayer, because if she went back to Asphodel and everything else faded, that was the last thing he wanted her to remember.

“You’re a gift, cariño,” she said, holding him tightly. “Never forget that.”

Her fingers drummed against his back, shaping familiar words in Morse code for the final time.

And then she was gone.

“Goodbye, mom,” Leo whispered, letting the tears flow freely as the figure in front of him changed back into the goddess of ghosts. “Nos vemos.”

He wanted to believe that, more than anything.

Losing his mom again hurt like hell, but Leo was startled to discover that the pain was different from the first time. It wasn’t the raw, bloody mess his heart had been after the first time he’d lost her. It wasn’t the dull ache that had refused to leave him in the years since, either. Seeing her again—getting a proper goodbye this time—had fixed something in him that he’d convinced himself would remain broken forever. It was the pain of a broken bone being set. He knew it would sting for a while, but for the first time since his mom’s passing, it felt like a wound that might actually heal.

He tried to blink the tears out of his eyes and registered with a start that he was currently clinging to Melinoe. Oops.

Leo felt so absurdly okay for the first time since he’d been eight years old that for a second he’d forgotten he was still at immediate risk of getting his reckless wish to join his mom in Asphodel granted.

He should have scrambled back.

For some reason, he didn’t. He untangled himself from Melione’s arms, but he did so slowly. Then he took her strange, mismatched hands and squeezed them briefly before letting go, letting his cane hold his weight again.

The goddess remained utterly frozen in place, just looking at him with an uncomprehending expression on her face.

“I know you were, like, trying to destroy me and shit, but thank you. I really needed that, actually.” He sniffled. “Screw you for all the other stuff you put me and my friends through, and especially for the Piper thing, but I’m grateful I got to see my mom. I missed her like hell.”

Melinoe stared at him, pure disbelief written all over her face.

“After everything that’s happened between you…” She gulped, and Leo’s eyes went wide as saucers when he realized what was happening. The goddess of ghosts was trying not to cry. And she was failing. “She… she just held you.”

“Fuck, I know.” Leo wiped at his face. “My mom is the best.”

He felt a little sorry for Melinoe, suddenly. She spent so much of her time in the Fields of Punishment and around restless ghosts. Most of the emotions she felt had to be raw and negative and haunting. 

He supposed it was no wonder that witnessing a bit of genuine love would turn you into a wreck when you were surrounded by misery constantly.

The first time Piper had hugged him, Leo had also felt like bawling—not that he’d ever have admitted that out loud.

“You good?” Leo asked, and it was maybe the most absurd thing he’d ever said to any deity. “Not going to, like, dissolve me into smoke or something?”

Melinoe shook her head very slightly.

“I should talk to my parents,” she said, her voice cracking, and then she was gone, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of thick fog.

Leo stared at the place she’d disappeared from for a moment, trying to process everything that had just happened. A part of him wondered if maybe Melinoe had let his mom stay for as long as she had—if maybe she’d needed this, too.

Fuck, this whole situation was absurd. Him and his mom had just defeated a goddess with a hug.

“We just defeated a goddess with a hug,” Leo yelled into the desert. Saying it out loud just made it sound even more absurd.

He let himself fall back into the sand and started laughing hysterically.

———

Notes:

So! How are we feeling? …I’m gonna need to hand out tissues, aren’t I? Whoops.

Did the art help at all? Did it make things worse? In either case, please go check out @coquettemouseevil who made the gorgeous commission for me! :)

I hate that Leo never really got any real closure about his mom’s death in canon, so the second I decided I was writing this fic I knew I had to do something about that. And then the Sword of Hades story with Melinoe summoning people’s parents on them came along, and well… the rest is history :) I know this is a tiny bit different from how it works in the short story, but this is my fic and I can do what I want, so shhh.

I’ve had this chapter planned out for an incredibly long time and edited it half to death, but (barring my Spanish related anxieties) I’m really, really happy with how it came out. Leo may be going through it in this fic, but there are at least mom hugs, so maybe the world isn’t fundamentally bad <3

I went back and forth on whether to include translations for the Spanish parts but ultimately decided against it because I think most of it is pretty clear from context. The two exceptions I’m making are the last bits, one because I’m worried I messed it up since I had to use a tense I haven’t technically learned yet and the other because the literal translation is a little different from the figure of speech you’d translate it with and I think the distinction matters here “te quiero y siempre te querré” roughly translates to “I love you and I will always love you” (or at least that’s what I was going for, apologies if I messed it up) “nos vemos” you’d probably translate with “see you”, but in the literal sense it’s more along the lines of “we’ll see each other” :)

Some of you may be wondering why Esperanza is in Asphodel rather than Elysium because she’s a wonderful person, and it’s partially because Elysium is pretty widely considered hero-exclusive, and partially for thematical reasons. As for whether she’s going to stay in Asphodel long-term… well, who knows ;)

Also, I am still doing the Piper fic, I’m just way busier than I expected to be and it’s kind of turning out longer than I was planning for it to be so it’s taking me longer than I hoped.

As always, hope you guys enjoyed it, and thank you so much for reading!

Chapter 17: Leo files an accessibility complaint

Forget Melinoe and Gaia and resurrected Roman emperors, these stairs were going to be the death of him.

Walking down the staircase of doom had mostly been annoying, but Leo had also been worried about things other than stairs at the time. Walking back up that same endless staircase utterly exhausted and with a broken ankle was a special kind of hell—which, considering this was an exit to the Underworld, was maybe the point.

The makeshift repairs he’d made to his cane finally gave up on him about ten minutes into his battle with the stairs. Leo stuffed the remnants back into his tool belt with an annoyed huff. This wasn’t a development his ankle particularly liked.

After realizing he’d at most managed to get a third of the way up and he was already utterly out of breath and at constant risk of toppling backwards down the stairs, Leo let himself sink down onto the staircase. He sat sideways, keeping his gaze straight ahead as he used the tool belt to summon a water bottle.

It helped, but not enough. He didn’t think his ankle would be very cooperative without at least some medical care. Even if Leo’s first aid skills hadn’t been as limited as they were, he wasn’t sure he could have done much about the injury without risking an accidental look in a direction that might count as backwards, so he reluctantly dug the last remaining ambrosia out of his tool belt.

After his recent experience with almost burning himself up in the only way a fireproof child of Hephaestus was physically capable of, he’d been too worried about using too much to take more than a nibble when the pain grew unbearable. But since it had been a while since the basilisk encounter, he hoped he could get away with eating half of his last cube. It tasted like marshmallows half-melted into hot chocolate. 

Leo sat on the steps with his eyes closed and just enjoyed the hopeful image the taste conjured up—being squeezed between Piper and Jason at the campfire after a close call building the Argo II. Jason had smiled at him so sincerely, and Piper had laughed at one of his stupid jokes, and it felt so much like home that Leo’s breath caught just remembering it. The memory was like a warm, comforting blanket around his shoulders.

He’d feel that way again. And this time, he wouldn’t let anything hold him back—not his doubts and not his stupid fears. This time, he’d hold on as tightly as he physically could.

The pain in his ankle dulled, and he didn’t feel feverish, which was a relief. He wrapped the remaining bits up again and packed them back into his bottomless tool belt. Despite the fact that he hadn’t actively summoned anything else, his fingers brushed over a small metal… something. He closed his fingers around the object and pulled out a tiny box. When he realized what it was, he burst out laughing.

“Oh gods, my equipment is an optimist,” he snorted, staring at the stupid box of breath mints in disbelief.

Even after everything he’d been through, Leo wasn’t that much of an optimist, but he popped one of them into his mouth regardless. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been down there or what exactly Underworld morning breath smelled like, but he assumed Jason probably wouldn’t appreciate more Underworld smell after being stuck there for months. Besides, the taste gave him something other than his frustration with the stairs to focus on.

Leo wasn’t sure how much time he spent walking up that stupid staircase. Enough to promise himself to never take the stairs again if there was an elevator available, that was for sure.

It seemed impossible he ever reached the top, but an eternity later, he finally collapsed on the landing, legs and lungs burning. 

The entrance was still as closed as he’d left it.

For several moments, he just stayed there, struggling to block out his aching body as he tried to catch his breath. There was a part of him that sort of longed to just pass out right where he was, but obviously that wasn’t a real option. 

He’d pushed through everything else. He’d push through his exhaustion, too.

“Hey, can it count if I just rhythmically knock a few times or something? I’m tired,” he asked the stone entrance, not feeling especially optimistic about his chances. 

Like he’d expected, the stone was tragically unmoved by both this plea and his knocking. This was one of the times he seriously wished he had a phone. Spotify would have been really convenient right about now.

That the tool belt was done with its cooldown told Leo truly everything he didn’t want to know about the amount of time he’d spent on the stairs, but at least it meant he was able to grab the Valdezinator right away.

Like before, it pulled his feelings out of him. It took him a moment to realize that it was still a version of the sad, haunting melody that had allowed him to enter. But something about it was… different. More hopeful.

And as garbage as Leo was at interpreting instrumental music, even he realized it sounded like a love song.

By the time the song ended, he was even more exhausted than he’d been when he’d first begun to play, but to his relief, the final cord made the rock at the entrance move aside like it had been rolled away by huge, invisible hands.

The warm city air hit his face, sunlight streaming into the tunnel.

It was such a relief Leo almost cried. Part of him had been worried that he’d get up here in the middle of the night, dooming himself to sit in the grass for several hours, unable to sleep and slowly going nuts while he waited for the sun to come up. That would have been just his luck.

But for once, the universe had apparently decided to have mercy on him.

Leo closed his eyes and felt the sun against his skin, taking a few slow breaths. It wasn’t fresh air, exactly—he was still in New York City, after all—but after breathing nothing but musty Underworld air for ages, it still worked wonders.

He gathered his strength as best he could, slowly pushing himself to his feet. He felt unsteady on his legs, but he told himself he could do this. He’d made it this far, after all. 

He leaned on the walls of the tunnel as he stumbled out, desperately wishing he still had his makeshift crutch to steady himself, but he gritted his teeth and just kept walking. 

He wasn’t sure how far he would have to go for Jason to be bathed fully in light. He didn’t know how closely his best friend had been allowed to follow him. Maybe his soul was a slowpoke. Better safe than sorry. 

After everything he’d been through to get here, Leo wasn’t going to let himself be screwed over by a technicality.

He walked through the park, following one of the paths. A few mortals gave him weird looks as he passed. He shrugged it off. He probably looked like hell just spat him back out—which, to be fair, it sort of had. 

Leo ignored them and kept walking. It didn’t matter how tired he was. He had plenty of practice with wandering. He’d walk to the ends of the earth, if that was what it took.

Leo felt the change in the air the moment it happened. The sun was still blazing down from above and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but suddenly, it smelled faintly of summer rain. A light breeze tickled the curls at the back of his head.

Leo stopped in his tracks, eyes brimming with tears. A beat passed. Two. Then a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, holding him tight. They felt impossibly warm and familiar, and Leo let himself melt into them like he was coming home.

“I’m right here,” Jason said, his voice as soft as it was unwavering. Hearing it again after so long was almost enough to do Leo in right there. Which, considering he’d just made it out of the Underworld alive, would have been an extremely stupid way to go. “Didn’t doubt you for a second.”

At this, finally, Leo started weeping. 

“Hi, Superman,” he said, barely managing to even get the words out. His voice was watery, and it trembled almost as badly as the rest of his body. His knees wanted to give out.

It was such a completely ridiculous thing—Jason’s unshakable faith in him. Because all Leo had been doing for however long this had taken was doubt himself. There had been several moments when he’d almost given up. Hell, basically all Leo had been doing since they met was doubt himself and his abilities. He’d messed up constantly. Jason had been around for several of his most colossal fuck-ups. 

And somehow, despite this, Jason still managed to sound like that when he talked about him—like everything Leo did was pure magic. Like Leo himself was somehow one of the best things that had ever happened to him.

‘Let yourself be loved’, his mother had said. And gods, he was. He was so, so impossibly loved.

Leo needed to see Jason, then. Needed it more desperately than he’d ever needed anything in his life.

He turned and finally, finally, after almost a year apart, he was looking at Jason, who was beaming back at him. 

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Leo said quietly, feeling terribly ashamed. It was raw and sincere in a way he so rarely managed to be, and he couldn’t possibly have said anything else. The tears just kept streaming down his face. “I’ve been doubting myself for so long that I couldn’t take your word for it when you said you believed in me. I was being kind of shitty to both of us that way.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” was all Jason said in return, voice slightly watery, and then he pulled Leo back to his chest with ridiculously practiced ease. Leo slotted into place, his head tucked under Jason’s chin like he had been made to fit right there.

The sheer impossibility of it all hit him, then—the impossibility of a world with them both alive, together. Of him succeeding where Orpheus hadn’t. Of them actually being free of the prophecy that had been ruining their lives since before they’d even met.

“You’re not gonna dissolve on me now that I’ve turned, are you?” Leo asked, feeling terribly ill at the thought that it had somehow been too soon. He pulled back a little so he could scan for signs Jason might be going translucent, but there were none. Every part of him felt perfectly solid.

“Nah.” Jason was still smiling at him, so widely that it rivaled the version of him in the picture Leo had pulled from the Styx. “Feeling pretty great for a dead person.”

“Looking pretty great for a dead person, too,” Leo muttered before he could stop himself. 

Jason actually blushed. 

He looked almost exactly how Leo remembered him. His hair was neat and looked newly cut, which seemed a little silly considering the circumstances, but was somehow perfectly on brand for Jason. Couldn’t risk not passing the thorough haircut inspection for freshly resurrected Roman demigods, or something. His eyes were bright and kind. He looked a lot less tired than the last time Leo had seen him. Apparently there was some truth to the whole “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”-saying. Go figure. 

Jason’s clothes sort of looked like a school uniform—white shirt, gray trousers and shiny shoes. It was a terrible outfit, and Leo really hoped that it wasn’t Underworld standard, because unlike Jason, he definitely couldn’t have pulled that one off.

Ridiculously, Jason had even gotten to keep his glasses.

…yeah, okay, so maybe Leo was staring a little. He couldn’t tear his gaze away. Worse: it kept wandering treacherously to the scar on Jason’s lip. He felt so warm and alive, and they were clinging to each other so tightly that Leo could feel Jason’s heartbeat through his shirt.

If Leo had been thinking, he probably would not have done what he did next. 

Thing was, though: Leo wasn’t thinking. Not even a little bit. 

He just got on his toes and kissed him.

Jason’s eyes went wide as saucers, but then his expression turned gooey-soft. Despite the initial shock, he reacted well enough—hands on Leo’s shoulders, mouth pressing back softly against his. 

At this confirmation that their current mouth-to-mouth situation was apparently very much wanted, Leo let his eyes flutter closed and let himself relax wholly into the kiss.

It was kind of perfect, as far as first kisses went. He had always found people describing kisses as electric ridiculous. He’d kissed people before (albeit not many) and it had never been the way it appeared in the movies. 

This, though… there really wasn’t another word for it. His entire body was tingling. He could feel his hair standing up in all directions, like it had the time Piper had rubbed a balloon over it at a party. Mark that down under risks of kissing a son of Jupiter. 

It wasn’t like Leo was much better. With everything he was feeling right now, it took a great amount of focus he barely had not to light Jason’s shirt on fire. 

It would have been pretty par for the course, honestly, if they’d ended this whole resurrection business with accidentally sending each other into the infirmary. They managed to avoid it, thankfully—though the way Jason beamed when they broke apart made it a pretty close call on Leo’s part.

“Leo, I-” Jason’s breath caught. He seemed at an utter loss for words. He was looking at Leo like he was the sun. “You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever met, you know that, right?”

Leo thought his chest would cave in, and he wasn’t even sure he minded.

“Yeah, I know. I’m fucking amazing,” he replied, but instead of exuding an air of joking almost-confidence, the words came out wet. Life was so unfair. He’d spent so long yearning to kiss Jason Grace, and now he didn’t even get to look all cool and suave about it. Instead, he just stood there, bawling like a baby.

“You are,” Jason said softly into his hair, the arms that had been wrapped around his shoulders wandering up to cup his cheeks, and this time Jason was the one who leaned down to kiss him. The feeling was all sparks. 

This time, Leo maybe very slightly singed Jason’s too-perfect haircut, but neither of them really cared.

They remained like this for a while, their foreheads pressed together, and Leo suddenly found himself really thankful for his stupid optimistic toolbelt and its tendency to spit out breath mints when he was nervous.

Then Jason moved back a little. His hands were back on Leo’s cheeks, and, for some reason, he started gently tilting his head in a few different directions like he needed to make sure all his gears were still in the right places. 

Leo laughed. Gods, he felt so light. When was the last time he’d been able to laugh so easily? “Dude, what in the world are you doing?”

“I need to make sure you’re okay.” 

“You need to make sure I’m okay?” Leo raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re the one who died, you goof.”

“You blew yourself up!” Jason protested, looking frantic. His eyes shone with unshed tears. “Fuck, Leo, I thought- Piper and I spent so long looking for you, and we couldn’t find you. We thought- I was terrified.”

Right, yeah. Leo had been so busy with his soaring heart, he’d briefly forgotten their last interaction had ended with him quite literally exploding himself.

“I… sorry about that. Sorry for disappearing.” He looked away. His chest ached. “Sorry for taking so long to get home.”

“I wanted it to be me,” Jason admitted quietly. He was trembling. Leo was still holding him, and that just made him want to hold on even closer.

“I know,” Leo said, chewing on his lip. “I couldn’t let that happen. I already thought I’d lost you twice, and I couldn’t go through that again. I wanted you to live.” His voice broke. “And then you went and died on me, anyway.”

“Maybe we both need to stop dying so much,” Jason said, and it would have almost qualified as a joke if it hadn’t been for the tears dripping into Leo’s hair.

Leo couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand seeing Jason upset. Couldn’t stand knowing that Jason had probably been trying to joke to make things easier for him when that was Leo’s thing. 

“Yeah, tell me about it. Death needs to get out of this relationship,” Leo joked. “Stop third-wheeling and get your own boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” Jason asked softly. 

Leo’s face felt awfully hot, and he was pretty sure that the only reason he didn’t burst into flame was that, after everything, he quite literally did not have the energy.

“No pressure,” he said immediately, barely resisting the urge to play things off entirely. “I know we sort of both just got out of relationships, and you were literally dead up until ten minutes ago. I don’t- I don’t want to mess this up. I’m just glad to have you back. That’s the only thing that matters.”

“You don’t mess things up nearly as much as you seem to convince yourself you do.” Jason squeezed his hand and pressed a soft kiss to his hair. “I think boyfriend sounds great.”

“Oh.” Leo gaped at Jason dumbly for a moment before his brain came back online and his lips tugged up into a grin. “I mean, of course you do. As we’ve already established, I’m amazing.”

“I don’t get why you keep saying that like it’s a joke.”

At this rate, Leo was pretty sure he’d either burn down all of Central Park or just melt into a puddle on the spot. Whatever happened first. 

Because the universe had garbage comedic timing, that was when his legs gave out. It was less of a shock than Leo would have liked. It had been mostly the ambrosia and adrenaline that had kept him on his feet, and with both of those draining, his injured ankle was really determined to show him how much it had detested all those stairs.

He went down with a yelp.

Jason didn’t let him fall. In all the time they’d known each other, he so very rarely had.

“I really need to stop falling for you so much,” Leo huffed into his shoulder as Jason lowered them both into the grass. “Fuck. Ow.”

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Jason was back to frantically looking him over. He seemed like he was about to lose it. “I can’t- Please let me help. I can’t lose you again.”

“Okay, calm down, Sparky. There is no reason for that level of fussing. You were the only one at immediate risk of dissolving. I’ve just got a stupid broken ankle that’s seriously displeased with me standing on my toes to kiss you. That won’t be the thing that finally kills me.” Leo tried for a smile but was pretty sure the only thing he managed was a slightly more enthusiastic wince. “It’s not even a very creative injury! I can start a club with Piper and Annabeth.” He paused. “Not inviting Calypso, though. That’d be way too awkward.”

His legs felt like pudding and his ankle throbbed viciously. The rest of his body wasn’t doing much better. The exhaustion went all the way down into his bones.

Shit, how long had it been since he’d last slept?

“We should get you back to camp,” Jason decided, leaning down to inspect Leo’s leg. The wince on his face was enough for Leo to decide he did not need to look at the injury. “You did a good job with the brace, but you need medical attention.”

“Yes, mom.” Leo rolled his eyes. “You literally only just came back to life, I can’t believe you’re already hovering over me again.”

“I just worry.” Jason squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll try to find some ice to help with the swelling. Is there anyone you can call to pick us up?”

~~~~

While Jason was off acquiring ice, Leo called Percy. The second Percy saw him, his shoulders went slack with relief. Then his features melted into a grin and he said, “told you so.”

“Shut up,” Leo said, but he was grinning, too.

“You look-”

“-like hell?” Leo finished, raising an eyebrow. “Thanks. I just got back. It actually wasn’t so bad. The place has a worse reputation than it deserves.”

“I was going to say you look happy,” Percy pointed out, but he was laughing. “But yeah, you do also look a little bit like hell.” Then his eyes fixated on something behind Leo, and he beamed. “Jason? Dude, you have no idea how good it is to see you.”

“It’s really good to see you, too.” Jason lifted one arm, waving at Percy. He was panting a little, like he’d run all the way to wherever he’d been and back here. 

“Question, though: did you get resurrected with low blood sugar or something?” Percy asked, cocking his head. “Why are you holding, like, fifteen popsicles?”

“Popsicles?” Leo had been a little distracted by Jason’s soft smile and his reddened cheeks and therefore hadn’t paid much attention to anything else, but Percy was right. For some reason, Jason was carrying a whole armful of popsicles. “Did you get hungry?”

“No. They’re for first aid.” Jason said, like that was a completely normal statement to make. “I told you I was going to try and find ice. This was the next best thing.”

He placed the popsicles next to Leo’s ankle, then sunk into the grass beside him, immediately wrapping his arm around him again. Leo deflated against his chest, pressing his cheek to Jason’s. He could get used to this whole boyfriend business.

“Yeah, I have no idea how I didn’t see it before,” Percy muttered, shaking his head. “Guessing that means you two figured things out?”

”We did. I don’t know how Jason resisted my charms for so long, but luckily I’m a very good kisser.” Jason made a choking sound, which caused Leo and Percy to burst out laughing in unison. “Dude, I know I’m hilarious, but please don’t die, okay? Resurrecting you was way too much effort. I’m not doing this a second time.”

“Yeah, you would,” Jason said, his trembling voice full of quiet awe, and gods, Leo was absolutely unfairly in love with this idiot.

“Okay, maybe I would. I’d be very annoyed with you, though, so you’d better not.” He flicked him in the head. 

Jason laughed in that dizzyingly wonderful way—warm and loud and with his whole chest. 

“Is that what me and Annabeth always make you guys put up with? Oh gods.” Percy was still laughing. “I’m assuming you two could probably use someone to pick you up, and I know I promised I would, but mom trusted me to bathe Estelle, and we ended up having a little too much fun. I sort of flooded half of the apartment. I need to fix that before my parents get back.”

Leo snorted. “No worries, Aquaman. We’ll find someone else.”

“About that…” Percy winced. “You should probably call Piper.”

“Yeah, I know. She probably should have been the first person I called, but I figured I kind of look like a wreck, and I didn’t want to worry her.”

“It might be a little late for that.” Percy was full-on grimacing now. “I don’t keep things from Annabeth. At least not the important stuff. She could tell something was up. When I told her it had been more than a week and I hadn’t heard a word from you since…”

“…she talked to Piper.” Leo felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head. He thought of Katoptris and the vision of Piper sobbing in Annabeth’s arms. 

“She hopped on the next available flight down here. It took the combined effort of her siblings and yours to keep her from trying to go after you.”

“Right. Well. It was nice knowing you both.” Leo hid his face in his hands and groaned. “Pipes is going to murder me. And I don’t even get to complain about it, because I totally deserve it. I’m the worst friend in the entire universe.”

“I didn’t tell her about the Burning Maze prophecy for ages. And then I died,” Jason pointed out, voice dripping with guilt. “So there’s a decent chance she’s going to murder us both.”

~~~~

The only thing that let Leo temporarily put off the most terrifying Iris Message of his life was the fact that his boyfriend insisted on doing some basic first aid before anything else. Jason carefully loosened the brace and stored it safely in Leo’s tool belt. Jason had decided it was safer to take it off so it didn’t keep restricting the swelling, which was somehow both a huge relief and made Leo cry out in pain as more blood rushed into his injured ankle. 

Jason was very gentle when he changed the bandages and fastened the popsicles to Leo’s leg, the movements practiced from the years of first aid training he’d gotten at Camp Jupiter that was too close to muscle memory for him to ever forget. Unfortunately, all the gentleness in the world didn’t really change the fact that Leo’s ankle was twice its normal size and throbbed painfully with every beat of his heart.

“Ow. Shit.”

Jason looked him over, concern written all over his features. 

“Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry.”

He moved to sit beside Leo again, soothingly running a hand through his hair. Leo leaned into the movement and sighed. “I’ve had worse.” He scowled down at his ankle. “Isn’t ambrosia supposed to actually fix things, not just temporarily make the pain go away?”

“Technically yes. It speeds up the healing process. But I don’t think it can move bones. This looks really badly dislocated.” 

“Ah. Neat.” Leo grimaced. “My mom tried to set it, but I think I messed it up again during my fight with that stupid basilisk.”

Jason froze. “You got to see your mom?”

“Yeah. Long story that I don’t think I have the emotional capacity for right now. I’ll tell you about it later,” Leo said, letting himself crumple against Jason’s chest and looking up at the sky. “For now, we really need to call Piper.”

“Yeah, we do.”

Leo wished he could have made the world’s most terrifying Iris Message without popsicles strapped to his ankle, but no dice. The longer they waited, the worse it got. And despite knowing how furious she’d be with him, Leo really wanted to see Piper. He’d missed her desperately these last few weeks. 

He flicked another drachma into the small rainbow produced by his demigod cellphone—that thing really needed a proper name one of these days, but that was another thing Leo didn’t have the capacity for right now.

“Piper McLean. Camp Half-Blood.”

The image flickered for a moment, and then there Piper was, sitting at the Aphrodite table with her siblings. They’d apparently caught her in the middle of lunch—Leo spotted several mostly empty plates, but it didn’t look like Piper had touched her food at all. She looked exhausted. 

Leo was surprised and mildly horrified to see that, despite the heat, she’d wrapped herself up in the fireproof army fatigue jacket Calypso had made him back on Ogygia. Leo must have forgotten it at her place when he’d visited her in Tahlequah.

His mom’s jacket suddenly felt heavier around his shoulders. The thought that Piper had missed him in that same grief-stricken, all-encompassing way… Leo felt ill.

He spent a moment trying to figure out what to say. Piper was staring down at her plate so intensely that she apparently hadn’t even noticed the message popping up. Then Drew nudged her gently.

Piper glanced up, her eyes widened, and then she stood so abruptly that she nearly made the bench she’d been sitting on topple backwards to the floor, despite the fact that three of her siblings were still sitting on it.

“Uhm, hi?” Leo offered, which maybe wasn’t the strongest opener he could have gone for. “Listen, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Piper hissed through gritted teeth. “Where are you two?”

“Central Park,” Jason offered before Leo could, and then the image dissolved so abruptly that it was obvious Piper had cut the connection.

Leo huffed out a startled laugh. “Gods, we are so dead.”  ~~~~

In Leo’s defense, he really had planned to spend the next half an hour coming up with a decent apology, just in case Piper would leave them alive long enough for him to open his stupid mouth.

Unfortunately, he was exhausted and in pain and Jason was right there, all of which was a little distracting.

There was so much he wanted to talk to Jason about, too, but Leo didn’t really get to do that, either. He was so tired that he just let himself sink against Jason’s shoulder and started to doze off.

Jason didn’t seem to mind at all—he just let Leo rest there and wrapped an arm around him, moving his hand up and down Leo’s arm in a soothing motion.

Jason shifted slightly every few minutes to check on the steadily melting popsicles, but otherwise he remained glued to Leo’s side, unmoving. Leo could feel his warm breaths against his hair.

Gods, Leo had missed Jason’s steady presence. He’d missed Jason holding him like this.

Despite his broken ankle and impending death, this was the calmest Leo had felt in a long time.

It took everything in him not to fall asleep.

~~~~

Leo knew Piper had spotted them even before he opened his eyes. Her steps were familiar—from Wilderness School and camp and the weeks they’d spent on the Argo, Leo knew exactly what Piper’s angry stomps sounded like on every imaginable surface. 

He blearily opened one eye, then the other, trying to blink the spots out of his vision, and yep, there she was, running down the path towards them at a speed that would have made the Flash jealous.

“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Piper cursed, looking back and forth between them like she was trying to decide whether to hug or pommel them both. She zeroed in on Leo first—possibly because that was easier than figuring out what to say to a person she’d thought was dead for good this time. “Leo Valdez, when I said I’d give you space to do whatever you needed to do to deal with your grief, I did not mean run off into the Underworld!”

“Uh oh, first and last name? I’m in trouble,” Leo mumbled sheepishly. “And you didn’t exactly clarify, so-”

“Fuck you!” Piper yelled, tears sparkling in her eyes. “I’d already lost one of my best friends. Did you think I wanted to lose the other one, too?”

It was a completely stupid reaction because Piper was absolutely furious with him, but Leo found himself struggling not to smile. Gods, he’d missed her so much.

“Love you too, Pipes,” he said, making himself look directly at her. Sleep deprived and in pain or not, he owed her at least an ounce of sincerity. “I don’t tell you that enough, but I do.”

Leo couldn’t find the words to apologize beyond that.

Nothing would have felt like enough of an apology for leaving her the way he had. The best thing he could offer was to let her feel whatever she needed to feel, and maybe hug it out after.

She was angry now, sure. She deserved to be. But it was a good kind of fury—one that stemmed entirely from the fact that she loved him and worried about him and wanted him to be okay. He wasn’t scared of it. He wasn’t scared that it would break them. After everything they’d been through together, he didn’t think anything could.

Piper looked at him, wide-eyed, but then her eyebrows drew together again. “If you think that in any way makes up for the absolute hell you put me through-”

“I know it doesn’t. Leaving without telling you was fucked up, and you deserve so much better. But you’re my best friend, and I love you, and I want you to know that.”

“I do. I’m still livid, though,” Piper snapped, rounding on Jason. “And you. We promised we’d protect each other. We promised we wouldn’t let anyone end up dead. What were you thinking, sacrificing yourself like that?”

Jason looked just as lost for words as Leo felt. In his defense, he’d still been dead an hour ago. He’d probably assumed he had several more years to make up excuses before he saw them again.

Rookie mistake. This was why you always had your excuses ready just in case.

Jason looked at Piper with the expression of a kicked puppy. She was a million times stronger than Leo, because he could not have stayed mad if Jason had looked at him like that.

“I was trying to keep you safe,” Jason said quietly. “Like Leo did for me.”

Something inside Leo’s chest broke at the words. “Dude, I am the worst possible person you could take as an example. I have no sense of self-preservation. Everyone knows that.”

Piper glared at them both.

“If either of you pulls anything like this again, I’m going to make Gaia look like a fucking cakewalk, do you hear me?” 

They nodded in unison. Then Piper threw herself at the two of them so hard they all ended up sprawled in the grass. 

Most of Leo was glad he was being hugged rather than murdered, except for his long-suffering ankle, which currently screamed like it was being murdered.

“Can you please not immediately concuss Jason again? We just got him back,” he hissed through clenched teeth, trying to block out the pain. He felt like he was home for the first time in almost a year, and he refused to let his stupid injury mess this up for him.

One of his arms was pinned firmly under Jason’s back, but the other wound around Piper immediately, pulling her even closer. Gods, he’d missed her so much.

“Considering I got stabbed the last two times, I’d actually much rather go back to the concussions,” Jason piped up.

“Dude, too soon! Your comedic timing is fucking garbage,” Leo shot back, somewhere between a gasp and a startled laugh, at the same time as Piper gritted out “don’t tempt me.”

Piper was trembling as she held them, sobbing into Leo’s shirt.

There were a million things Leo wanted to say to her, but a quiet, broken “sorry” was the only thing that actually made it out past the lump in his throat.

And then he was crying, too. Crying for all the time with her he’d wasted because of his stupid fears. Crying because he’d hurt her and she still held him with a few angry words but without hesitation. Crying for himself and the fact that he’d ever genuinely believed Piper would be better off without him when the first home they’d found after years of loneliness had been each other.

“‘Sorry’ doesn’t even begin to cut it. Why are you two incapable of fucking talking to me before running off to do something reckless that will most likely get you killed?”

“Sorry,” Jason said, and Piper looked like she was seriously considering smacking him.

“I hate you both,” she grumbled, but she didn’t let go.

They might have stayed like this forever, just holding each other, all of them somewhere between a laugh and a much-needed cry, but eventually Piper shifted a little, and suddenly way too much of her weight was on Leo’s bad ankle.

This time, he couldn’t suppress his pained yelp.

Piper scrambled back, scanning him frantically. “What’s- shit, your leg.”

“Yeah, I- broken ankle,” he groaned, trying to blink the spots out of his eyes. 

“What happened?” This was directed at Jason, which made sense if Leo looked even half as awful as he felt. 

Jason shrugged helplessly. “I wasn’t around for that part.”

“Lots. Almost fell into the Styx. Got haunted. Asphodel tried to turn me into a tree twice. Oh, and the goddess of ghosts decided to mess with me. You know, Tuesday.” Leo winced. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

Fuck, his leg hurt. How in the world had he been walking on his busted ankle for as long as he had if it was this bad? 

“We need to get you back to camp. Now,” Piper decided, in a voice that wasn’t even charmspeak but still left no room for opposition. She was on her feet in an instant, offering Leo a hand up. “Do you think you can stand? If Jason’s well enough for that, maybe you can just use us for balance.”

“I’m fine,” Jason said immediately, moving to stand on Leo’s other side without any further prompting.

“You were dead not even an hour ago,” Leo protested, allowing Piper to pull him to his feet. “If anyone needs to be taking things slow, it should be you.”

He didn’t stay on his feet for long. His ankle had apparently decided it was done supporting his weight for even a second. Black spots still danced along his vision, and everything spun in nauseating circles around him. He crumpled immediately, crashing right back into Jason’s chest.

Gods, he was so tired.

Piper screamed his name, sounding frantic for reasons Leo’s tired brain didn’t quite understand. The yelling was not helping his massive, throbbing headache.

“You’re okay. You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

Jason’s voice was right in his ear, and it took Leo a moment to register that his boyfriend had gathered him up into his arms, like he had on all those nights he’d fallen asleep working on the Argo.

Leo felt safe and happy and he could still hear Piper right there, the sounds of her movement as familiar as the back of his hand.

“‘M fine,” he mumbled feebly, still unsuccessfully trying to blink the spots out of his eyes. They just seemed to grow the harder he tried. “Is this a very bad time to mention that I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept in more than a week?”

“You fucking idiot,” Piper cursed, brushing his cheek with gentle fingers. “I can-” she started, but Jason didn’t let her finish.

“I’ve got him,” he insisted, cradling Leo to his chest. “Leo brought me all the way here. The least I can do is carry him the rest of the way.”

Leo passed out.

———

Notes:

Huge chapter with equally huge anxieties on my part linked to it, so I really, really hope you guys enjoyed it! Much, much love to the friends I bothered in the making of this chapter.

I was going to update yesterday but My Time Management Is Shit and I got very hung up on some specific bits as I was editing and… well. Saturday update it is! Sorry about that, lmao. We’ll be back to our regular scheduled Friday updates next week. 

Two chapters left now.

The fun thing about Orpheus and Eurydice is I can tag this fic Angst With A Happy Ending all I want and some of you probably still braced yourselves for things to go awry because of how dependent the myth is on last-second failure. None of that, though. I put these boys through the wringer, sure, but I don’t do suffering for the sake of suffering. 

Please know that in my mind Leo looks like a wreck after everything he’s been through and Jason looks perfect with not a hair out of place and is also looking at Leo with the most lovey-dovey expression imaginable.

Also, not sure if anyone caught that, but the “Leo wasn’t thinking”-bit is a deliberate callback to a scene in chapter seven, specifically when he’s yelling at Zeus on Jason’s behalf. It’s one of my favorite bits in the whole fic :)

Also also, Piper is back! I missed my girl. So did Leo.

Please know that while I was writing the reunion scene, I was thinking hard of Gio Navas’ Leo Valdez song “Embers in the Sky”, specifically of the “And at the end we stand. Love, storm, fire, whole again”-bit :)

Reviews appreciated as always!

———

Chapter 3: Festus torches a bedsheet

Leo and Piper picked out a simple white bedsheet to use for the shroud. It wasn’t fancy, but it was easily available and they made the most of it.

They tie-dyed it, both of them ending up with splotches of purple and orange all over their arms and clothes in the process.

Once the bedsheet was dry, they spent a whole afternoon stitching—and, quite frankly, doing a terrible job. They were both utter garbage at it. Hopefully, “it’s the thought that counts” still applied with dead best friends.

There was something kind of comforting about just sitting with Piper, working in silence on different ends of the same piece of fabric. In knowing that, if nothing else, Leo could at least do this for her.

“Jason would have loved this,” Piper sniffled when they inspected the final product.

“You think so?” Leo asked, building up to an entirely misplaced joke so he didn’t split open right there. “Personally, I’m not sure. He was such a stickler for rules, he might be offended that his shroud doesn’t meet demigod funeral regulations.”

“Shut up. You know he would have loved this,” Piper repeated, voice quavering terribly as they folded the shroud into a more compact form so they’d be able to carry it outside with ease later.

They couldn’t do a full funeral pyre—Piper’s backyard didn’t have the space, and they didn’t have the materials—but they’d built a campfire, and that would have to be enough.

Jason had already gotten a proper hero’s funeral. This wouldn’t be that. It wasn’t supposed to be.

“Pretty sure I poked myself with my needle and bled on the bedsheet at one point. If we end up summoning Jason and/or a random demon by accident, that’s totally my bad,” Leo warned, because he absolutely couldn’t be serious right now. He couldn’t. He’d shatter if he tried.

It wasn’t closure, but Leo still felt a bittersweet satisfaction when he looked at the finished product.

It was tradition to represent the godly parent with the shroud. They’d decided to say fuck that. 

Jason’s shroud was a mess of orange and purple dye. It had symbols stitched all over it, but none for anyone’s godly parent.

It had Piper’s dagger and a small flame for Leo so the three of them could be together one last time. 

The rest was just memories. A mess of stitches that was only recognizable as a bird’s eye view of the Grand Canyon if you had a particularly vivid imagination. A cartoonish taco and marshmallows and twin video game controllers. The Superman logo. A meteorite among a sky full of stars.

And, Leo’s final contribution: a terrible likeness of a ridiculous wolf plushie from the time they’d dragged Jason out of camp to go to a fair after he’d mentioned he’d never been. Despite the fact that it was his first time, Jason had somehow been the only one of them who’d actually managed to get a prize out of one of the terribly rigged claw machines. He hadn’t even cheated! There was truly no justice in the universe.

If Leo closed his eyes, he could still hear the way Jason had laughed that afternoon, his eyes sparkling and his usually neat hair a disheveled mess from all the rides Leo and Piper had made him try. They hadn’t let him live the wolf plushie down their whole ride back—they’d jokingly dubbed it his son and repeatedly asked him to name it. Jason had rolled his eyes at them and then promptly given the plushie up for adoption to one of the younger campers when they’d gotten back to camp, despite their horrified protests about how he couldn’t do that to his child.

Leo wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when he remembered it now.

Above all, this shroud was a tribute to Jason. Not to the version of him that most people had known, either. It wasn’t a tribute to Jason, the hero of Olympus, or Jason, the son of Jupiter and champion of Juno. 

Because sure, Jason may have been all of those things, too, but most of all, he’d been their friend. The guy who’d stayed awake with Leo in the sewer and tried to cheer him up. The guy who’d spent all night on the roof of his cabin with Piper, recreating a memory Hera had made up and making it theirs. Who was kind and just the right amount of goofy and had learned to loosen up and laugh at their antics. Who believed in the people he loved even more fiercely than he believed in the deities he’d been raised to worship.

This version of Jason had never been for the gods. This version of Jason was just for them.

~~~~

They waited until nighttime to hold the funeral, both because Jason had liked looking at the stars and because that posed less opportunity for the neighbors to wonder why the strange family that had just moved here was burning tie-dye bedsheets in the yard in the middle of the day.

Tristan didn’t ask exactly what it was they were doing. After a few weeks with them, he was probably used to their antics.

It was a nice night—not too warm, but also not super cold. The sky was clear and beautiful. Leo’s heart was too heavy to enjoy any of it.

With a gulp, he walked up to the unlit campfire, spreading the bedsheet across it with Piper. They had to keep it partially folded so it fit into their makeshift fire pit—the purpose of this wasn’t to accidentally burn down half of Tahlequah.

Piper let go of the shroud and stepped back, nodding to him.

Leo gulped. Right. He was supposed to light the shroud on fire. 

If the deceased didn’t have a partner, it was camp tradition for their closest friend to do final honors. Despite all of Leo’s faults, that was him. 

Besides, he was the one with the fire powers. He was the obvious choice.

This was supposed to be his job, and his burden. 

He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He held the fabric in his hands, all those memories of everything Jason had been, and he couldn’t do it. The lump in his throat felt bowling-ball sized, and he could hardly see what he was doing through the veil of tears that just wouldn’t stop.

Even after everything he’d told himself and promised Piper, he just couldn’t bring himself to close the lid on Jason’s figurative coffin. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready.

Leo didn't have to light the shroud on fire.

They’d let Festus come out of suitcase form for the evening, because it was only right that he also got to attend the funeral, weird looks from neighbors at the tiny plane flying back and forth above the house be damned. When Leo stood frozen in place with his hand on the shroud and couldn’t bring himself to light it, Festus creaked in sympathy, giving him another moment before promptly torching both Leo and the shroud. 

Leo didn’t have much capacity for focusing right now, so his clothes got a little singed, but he didn’t care. The fire felt familiar and weirdly soothing against his skin.

Festus creaked sadly, and Leo wiped at his own eyes with burning fingers, which was without danger for him but would have caused most other people to go blind in an instant.

“Thanks, buddy,” he said weakly, genuinely grateful for the warmth even though the night wasn’t super cold and he was technically dressed for the weather. He knew this was Festus being affectionate with him. It was Festus being affectionate with Jason, too. In a way, Leo was glad all three of them had gotten to be a part of this.

He kept his other hand on the burning sheet for another moment, afraid letting go would mean losing Jason all over again. It was a stupid thought. Jason wasn’t even actually here.

Finally, he wrapped his arms around himself and stepped back, sobbing quietly.

He was supposed to say a few words. That was how most funerals went—not just Camp Half-Blood ones. He’d actually wanted to come up with something to say, but every time he’d tried to focus on it, the pain got too intense for him to handle.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly, the flames draining out of his body from the sheer intensity of the cold, raw grief. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t even sure if he was apologizing to Piper for not being able to do any of the things he’d promised, or apologizing to Jason for disappearing and failing to cheat fate and getting him killed.

Whatever the case, he didn’t think he deserved either of their forgiveness.

Piper stepped forward and took his hand, squeezing it gently. Telling him it was okay, even when Leo knew it wasn’t. Even when it felt like he was failing both of them all over again.

“Jason, you were maybe the bravest, kindest person I knew,” she began, her voice quavering. Her hand shook in Leo’s—her whole body was trembling—but unlike Leo, she kept talking despite her tears. She’d always been stronger than him. “You did everything to protect the people you loved, up until the end. I wish you’d told me about the stupid prophecy sooner. I wish you didn’t always make yourself carry everything alone. I just- we both loved you a whole bunch, okay? I just need you to know that.”

“Why did you always have to play the fucking hero?” Leo cursed, squeezing Piper’s fingers a little too tightly. He could barely form the words. To no one’s surprise, the burning shroud didn’t answer. “This isn’t fair.”

“It never is,” Piper said in a quiet, broken voice. She pulled Leo to her chest. “We shouldn’t have to just accept this after everything we’ve been through. But as mad as it makes me, that’s all we can do.”

Something burned in Leo, then—a tiny, glimmering spark of grief and anger and despair, screaming that this couldn’t just be it. There had to be something they could do. He wouldn’t just accept this was how things had to be.

“I miss Jason. I just want him back,” he said, trying to pretend that was something that could happen, and not the same desperate wish of a crying eight year old that refused to be pulled away from his mother’s tombstone because she couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t be.

Half the reason he’d kept everyone at arm’s length for so long was he’d never wanted to feel loss like that again. But here he was—feeling just as small and helpless as he had back then.

“Yeah, I know.” Piper was still trembling against him. His shirt was wet with her tears. “Me too.”

Gods, Leo couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep talking about this. He couldn’t keep thinking about this. He couldn’t keep Jason’s stupid face out of his head for ten seconds and at this rate, he was sure he was going to lose it.

“I hate funerals,” Leo sobbed into Piper’s shoulder. “I’m just not a mourning person.”

It was a completely stupid thing to say. For some reason, it helped, though.

“Did you just make a pun?” Piper half-laughed, half-sobbed, looking at him in startled disbelief. “And it wasn’t even a very good pun. It’s literally the middle of the night.”

“Fuck off, I’m grieving. Actually funny Leo will be back in five to seven business days,” Leo said, clenching his trembling fingers into her shirt. “Besides, Jason liked my shitty puns.”

“Yeah, he did.” Piper sniffled. “Thank you for doing this with me. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t thank me. The last time I should have been there, I wasn’t.” Leo was trembling so hard that he genuinely thought he might have shaken himself to bits if she hadn’t been holding onto him. “Besides, I kind of failed massively at everything you asked me to do, so-”

“I don’t care,” Piper interrupted, hugging him so fiercely that it knocked the air right out of Leo’s lungs. He wouldn’t have had it any other way. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

For the longest time, they just stayed there, sitting in the grass, holding each other until the flames died and all that remained was the pitch-black night.  ~~~~

Leo spent half the night numbly staring up at the ceiling. He had been right. The funeral hadn’t helped him. All it had done was cause him to cry himself into a pounding headache. 

He’d done it for Piper’s sake—and looking at her sleeping face that was almost peaceful, he was glad he had—but unpacking all the emotions he’d tried so desperately to lock up had still left Leo feeling like shit.

He felt like someone had taken him apart and put him back together all wrong, conveniently forgetting to put some components back in at all. Every part of him that had belonged to Jason had been violently ripped out, and now Leo was left with a bunch of sparking cables.

None of this was right. Nothing would ever be right again. 

Jason was dead. He’d been larger than life, and now he was gone, just like that. Even after weeks of living with that reality, it still felt completely surreal. Time should have stood still. The whole world should have stopped spinning to mourn a loss like that. But it didn’t. The world just kept turning, completely unmoved by Leo’s grief. Life continued. And all that was left of Jason were memories, an empty dorm room and a single box of belongings that was collecting dust under Piper’s bed.

All Leo could do now was mourn the six months he’d lost, and every single memory they’d never get to make. 

Worse, maybe, was the fact that he had to mourn a future he’d started to take for granted—one where Jason was present for all of his birthdays, and his wedding, and the opening of the machine shop Leo had dreamed of since he was a kid. One where they were the kind of lame adults who had barbecue night once a week and spent a lot of time reminiscing about all the bizarre shit they’d gone through as teenagers. One where Leo got to corrupt a little blond kid into being his troublemaker accomplice, and a girl with dark curls sat on Jason’s shoulders, making a mess of his hair. One where they got to grow up and grow old alongside each other.

Leo had no idea how he was supposed to face a future without Jason. Every fiber of his being ached, but despite the pain, he wasn’t sure any of this would ever feel real.

Leo hadn’t imagined any sort of future for himself in a very long time. He’d spent years just trying to make it through the day. Anything beyond surviving had been a minor concern.

But then he’d met Jason and Piper, and he’d foolishly allowed himself to dream.

And now here he was, staring at the ceiling, mourning a world that would never exist.

~~~~

Leo dreamed of fire.

This in and of itself was not unusual. He was a demigod son of Hephaestus. Dreams of fire to him were about as shocking as Percy eating blue food or Annabeth designing a building that utterly defied the laws of physics. 

Leo’s first thought was that this was a call from his dad, who was sick of his moping and wanted to offer helpful, comforting insight like “this is why machines are superior to demigods. You can’t just rebuild demigods when they die.”

He wondered if there was a way to hang up on a godly parent. Man, he really needed to figure out how to cancel this crappy dream vision plan he’d been automatically opted into. That was what he got for never reading the demigod terms and conditions.

But it wasn’t his dad. He’d been in Hephaestus’ workshop often enough that he could recognize it on sight, and that wasn’t what this place was.

Leo looked around, confused. He was in what looked like a standard underground parking garage. 

Except, unlike what Leo assumed to be the norm for underground parking garages, this one was both completely empty and had a raging fire tornado in the middle of it. 

Despite the fact that Leo was standing decently far away, the air felt uncomfortably warm—and if he, who was usually completely unbothered by flames of any kind, could tell, that meant it had to be scorching hot.

It was the kind of heat he’d only felt twice in his life. Once when he’d blown himself and Gaia to bits, and once when he’d been eight years old.

Leo shivered. He could feel his whole body trembling, everything in him trying desperately not to remember.

“What the hell is this?” he yelled into the empty parking garage.

The parking garage didn’t have the decency to answer.

Except it suddenly wasn’t empty. 

There were figures crouching behind the columns. Most of them were blurry, more shapes than people Leo could recognize.

But one of them…

“Piper?” he asked breathlessly. She was right in his line of sight, halfway across the empty car park, pressed closely to one of the columns.

Piper didn’t look up. Her gaze was fixated on the swirling cone of fire. Flames rolled outwards from the storm’s center in waves. They collided with the columns, including the one Leo was standing behind. The column provided some protection from the fire, but didn’t help much with the heat. 

“Piper!” Leo repeated, louder this time. Panic gripped his heart. If he could tell it was hot, how painful did it have to be for her?

He had to get to her. He had to make sure she was okay.

It was a frustratingly slow process. Leo kept having to duck behind columns to dodge the fire. Usually, he wouldn’t have bothered, fire-resistant as he was, but this was the kind of heat even Leo wasn’t brave enough to mess with.

The final blast of fire before Leo got to her left Piper’s hair and one of her sleeves singed.

“Pipes?” he asked when he kneeled down beside her, his voice small. “Are you okay?”

She did look up, then, but she was looking past Leo like he was invisible.

He looked her over frantically. Her face was a mask of pain. Her arms… Leo gulped. Piper had been burnt, and badly. 

Leo couldn’t be burnt like that, but he knew it must’ve hurt like hell. He had no idea how Piper was even staying upright.

“Come on, we have to get you out of here,” he said, but it was hopeless. She didn’t seem to hear him.

More fire rolled past the column they were crouched behind and Piper winced at the heat, but she just stayed right there like she was pinned in place. She wasn’t running. Why the hell wasn’t she running?

Instead, she unslung something from her back—was that a blowpipe?—and aimed it right at the fire tornado.

“What, are you planning to knock the fire unconscious?” Leo asked, exasperated. Piper still didn’t seem to even notice he was there. She just poked her head out from the semi-safety of the column and took aim at the fiery cone, with no regards for how hurt she already was and how much worse it would get if whatever was controlling the fire got more pissed off. “We have to go!” 

Leo wasn’t thinking. He just knew instinctively that if he didn’t get her away from the firestorm, Piper wouldn’t make it.

He grabbed for her arm in blind desperation, pulling her back into cover.

Piper screamed in agony, dropping her weapon and clutching at the spot he’d touched. She curled into herself with a terrible whimper. 

Leo pulled away in horror. In his panic, he’d forgotten about the burns on her arms.

“I’m so sorry. I- I was just trying-” he said, his voice breaking. He’d gotten Jason killed, and now he’d hurt Piper. What kind of awful friend was he? “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did,” Piper bit out, furious. It wasn’t her voice. There was something resentful and ancient about it. “Look at you. The little demigod who defeated Gaia. Do you truly believe you can save your friend? Whose flames do you think caused these burns?”

The scene shifted. Piper was running. The parking garage behind her had exploded into a wall of fire that was rapidly catching up to her—nipping at Piper’s heels, then enveloping her. She screamed as the flames swallowed her whole.

Leo was screaming too. He tried to reach out, to find her in the flames, but he couldn’t move. He could only watch as she disappeared in the wall of heat and smoke.

Suddenly, it was Leo at the center of the firestorm, flames pushing outwards from his supernova center.

He tried to rein his powers in, but they wouldn’t listen. The more he tried to control them, the more fiercely they pushed back, rolling outwards, swallowing everything in their path.

Leo was eight and the machine shop came down around him. He was sixteen and the sky was on fire. 

He was almost seventeen and everything he’d ever loved continued to be swallowed by the inferno of his dumpster fire life.“You are a child of flame,” the voice that wasn’t Piper’s taunted at the back of his head. “Anything you touch, you burn.”

———

Notes:

I’ve always had several grievances with how Jason’s death was handled, and one of the main ones was the fact that his arc was about finding his place between two camps that he both felt like he belonged to, only to have his arc end with him dying and getting a Camp Jupiter Funeral with zero of his CHB friends (or his sister) present. Yeah, no. We are not doing that. We cannot have the point of Jason’s arc be “he is of both camps” only to reduce him back to just Roman in death and for half of his friends to not even be given proper space to mourn him. Let him be of both camps!! That was the entire point! Grrr.

Anyway, obviously Leo and Piper are the specific focus of this fic, but since they were also Jason’s strongest ties to CHB, it makes sense to have them do the honors.

There’s some personal bits in here, specifically Leo’s thoughts on a future he always just assumed Jason would be a part of. I had a loved one pass away a few months ago, and it’s really strange to come to terms with the realization of how much of the future you’d taken for granted. And suddenly all that’s left is this mental image of an empty chair that you always thought they’d fill.

My relationship with that person was completely different than Leo’s was with Jason, but that feeling remains vaguely the same.

On a (slightly less? Potentially more?) depressing note, the plot is starting to kick in a little bit there at the end! Not fast—partially because I wanted to avoid messing with the ending of ToA too much, meaning the majority of this fic takes place after Tower of Nero—but some stuff certainly is going on here ;)

I would loveee to hear if anyone has thoughts on that last bit. I considered giving some extra context since what that scene is won’t be equally obvious to all readers, but I decided I may actually just wait and see if someone in the comment section draws the right conclusion :)

————

Leo Valdez had a problem.

Granted, in comparison to some of the other problems he’d had over the years—homicidal earth goddesses, trips through the Underworld, an angry chimera chasing him through the local grocery store—this one was, admittedly, on the more mundane side of things. He wouldn’t necessarily call it a non-life-threatening issue, though. He was pretty sure that if he dropped Emilia, Reyna would probably murder him.

The thing was: Em was five months old now, and way heavier than you’d expect such a tiny person to be just from looking at them. She still had the tiniest little fingers and feet so impossibly small that it was hard to believe that miniature socks in that size even existed, and she also weighed a solid 16 lbs despite how small she was. 

Leo loved carrying his sobrina around. He loved her eyes that were full of curious wonder for everything the world had to offer and that didn’t discriminate between toys and people and stray socket wrenches Leo left lying around. He loved when she smiled at him and he soared with pride whenever he managed to make her laugh—an entirely new development, since apparently laughing wasn’t something babies did until they were a few months old. This had also taught him, belatedly, that maybe his failure to make Percy and Annabeth’s kid laugh as an infant wasn’t due to the kid hating him or Leo being inherently unfunny to children. It had just been an age thing.

He loved playing with Em when she was on her playmat or laying on his stomach, watching in awe as he waved around a noisy toy or one that changed colors when you squeezed it. She drooled on him, pulled his hair and was just as eager to grab his fingers as she’d been the first time he’d met her. He happily let her do all of that. That part of his job description as her tío.

But the thing about Em was that getting her to sleep was a bit of a nightmare. She was a fussy little thing who didn’t much like to be put down. Leo had learned quickly that Em slept best when someone held her in their arms and walked around with her the whole time. 

Leo liked carrying her and humming to her so much, but unlike his husband, he was cursed with a terminal case of noodle arms that even years of work in the forge somehow hadn’t fixed. Meaning: sooner or later, his arms grew heavy. 

He’d tried sitting down on the armchair and just holding Emilia against his chest while she snored, but she’d only been okay with that for about thirty seconds before she was awake and bawling about his audacity to try to rest. 

“You’ve definitely got your mom’s strong voice,” Leo sighed, gathering his niece back up in his arms and returning to his walk around the living room. He started humming to her again. Weirdly enough, Emilia liked being sung to by him, even though it was incredibly off-tune and he usually freestyled because he forgot half the lyrics to whatever song he’d been singing. “There’s so many embarrassing stories I could tell you about her, you know,” he whispered conspiratorially, glancing over in the direction of the attached dining room where his best friend was busy setting the table for dinner. “But I think those can wait until you’re old enough to tease her about them.”

“Don’t you dare,” Piper said, glaring at him all the way from the other room. 

“You don’t even know what I was telling her!” Leo defended himself, doing his best to look innocent.

“I can see your mischievous expression from here,” Piper shot back, raising an eyebrow at him. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t ruin my perfectly nice dinner.”

“Considering I cooked most of that dinner, I think I, of all people, should be allowed to ruin it,” Leo teased her. “I can and will plan mischief with my niece if I want to.”

“I keep a list of all the things I’m gonna get you back for once you and Jason have kids,” his best friend informed him casually. “Just so you know.”

“Eh, have you met yourself?” Leo nodded towards Piper’s writing desk, which still looked like a notebook had exploded all over it from what Leo assumed had been one of her book plotting sessions. “You’ll have misplaced that list by the time that actually happens. I’m not worried.”

He adjusted his niece where she rested against his shoulder. Shit, his arms were getting seriously tired. But Em was cooing happily, and he didn’t really want to put her down. Not yet. He liked holding her too much. 

He’d never be able to put her on his shoulders when she was a little older if he already crumpled under her weight at her current age.

“Reyna will know where it is,” Piper said with a grin. “There’s nothing in this house she can’t find.”

She was right about that one, of course. Reyna was a perpetual stress cleaner. From what he’d been told, she’d apparently reorganized the entire closet three separate times the week before Em had been born, and Leo knew she was the only reason the house overall was as presentable as it was. If it had been Piper’s place alone, the whole thing likely would have been in a state similar to her desk. Since it wasn’t, the offending desk was the only messy place he could find. The house was filled to the brim with pictures and books and little trinkets, but it was always, always tidy.

Leo had wondered, at first, how that didn’t drive Piper insane. He knew she’d hated the neat, organized mansions she’d grown up in where someone always made sure nothing was even slightly out of place. 

“Because this house is all heart,” Piper had told him, once. “My dad’s mansions looked the way they did because some manager or assistant decided they had to look put-together in pictures. But our house looks the way it does because it’s how Reyna loves. Because every little part of us is important to her and deserves to be treated with care in her eyes. She dusts off the stupid bobble heads we started collecting as a joke with the same care that she does my beadwork.”

That, he’d understood. If you’d spent most of your life not feeling seen, someone treating every silly little story and gift you brought home like a precious thing was the best feeling in the world.

“Yeah, your wife is scary organized for a demigod. Even Jason isn’t that bad,” Leo joked. Reyna was his hermana and he loved her and he was also extremely aware of the fact that she could kick his ass without as much as breaking a sweat. And she would absolutely help Piper get back at him for any potential shenanigans he got Emilia into. Eh, whatever. No regrets. “Speaking of Jason and Reyna, do you think they’re gonna be here soon?”

He looked at the clock.

It wasn’t that Leo was complaining about alone time with Piper and Em, but it was almost 8 pm and he was starting to get both hungry and a bit grumpy about the amount of husband deprivation he was being subjected to.

Also, there was only so much longer he could realistically hold Em before he actually had to start worrying about dropping her. If Jason and Reyna got here, he could just hand her over to either of them. Reyna would probably want to greet her daughter anyway, and Jason loved holding babies, and that way Leo would be spared the mortification of having to admit that he felt like he’d done a heavy workout from carrying around an infant. Piper would never, ever let him live that one down.

“I don’t know.” Piper looked down at her Iris watch. “She hasn’t messaged me yet. Hearing’s probably running late again. This case has been hell on her.”

At least Reyna had a decent excuse to not be here yet. She was out there fighting to get a demigod kid removed from a thoroughly unfit foster family and making sure they got to Camp Jupiter safely. 

Leo’s bastard husband, on the other hand, had abandoned him to officiate a wedding in New Rome. He hadn’t gotten a single measly kiss from his husband all day because of it. That was basically spousal abandonment. 

Sure, it was probably the happiest day in someone’s life, or whatever, but definitely not in Leo’s. Who in their right mind got married in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday, anyway?

Em was starting to fuss in his arms again. He hummed, trying to ignore his aching arms. He’d probably be sore from baby weightlifting in the morning. 

Piper looked at him apologetically. “She’s extra sensitive at the moment. She hasn’t been sleeping well. Reyna thinks she may be teething.”

“You sure? I mean, I know you’re the one married to her, but I think Reyna’s had a full set of teeth for years at this point,” Leo joked. He gave Emilia a sympathetic look. She had seemed more chewy than usual today. She was promptly forgiven for everything, including the strain on his arms.

He should bring her a chewable toy next time—something to make sure she didn’t pull a Jason and locate the nearest stapler.

“Har. Har,” Piper said, and even without looking up, Leo knew she was rolling her eyes. “I’d chuck a pillow at you if you weren’t using my daughter as a human shield,” she informed him, then added, “holding her a little higher might help. As cozy as she looks snuggled up against your shoulder, you know she likes being able to look around.”

Yeah, he did know that, and he was happy to oblige when his arms didn’t feel like they were falling asleep. He adjusted his hold on her regardless, knowing sooner or later he’d have to put her down. As much as Leo loved holding her, he couldn’t keep this up. He wasn’t so stubborn about it that he’d actually start risking her safety, no matter how mortifying telling Piper the truth would be.

Emilia cooed happily, then immediately started dozing off again while drooling on his shoulder.

So she’d only really wanted a view for about three seconds, tops. But Leo was sure the second he’d dare to lower his arms again, he’d be back to an armful of wailing infant.

“You’re lucky I love you so much,” he chided her, voice light, then turned back to Piper. “Hey, do you need help setting the table?” he tried to sound casual. Maybe there was a way he could get out of this without thoroughly embarrassing himself.

“Nah, I’m almost done.” Piper narrowed her eyes at him. “Besides, I sense an ulterior motive. You hate setting the table.”

She wasn’t exactly wrong about that. Leo liked cooking because it was a thing he’d learned from his mom, and also because he got to be creative. If something went wrong, there was usually a way to correct it or turn it into a happy accident, if you knew how. Fancy table settings, on the other hand, weren’t something he really liked to waste time on. As long as the food was good and he was spending time with his loved ones, Leo didn’t really care if they were eating off of paper plates in Medea’s sewer. Besides, when someone inevitably got distracted and pushed over their glass, not ruining a fancy table cloth in the process was usually a plus.

…not that that had ever happened to him or anything.

“No ulterior motive. I’m just hungry, I think.” He looked down at his niece. “I feel kind of mean eating without her, though. When was the last time she ate?”

“Half an hour ago?” Piper raised an eyebrow at him. “You were present. You know this.”

So that excuse to hand her over wasn’t going to work, either. Sheesh, had it really only been half an hour of him holding her? His arms were convinced it had been a week, minimum.

Before he could do something stupid—like maybe tell Piper the truth, after all—the front door opened with its usual creak. This was both a relief and very unfortunate, since it meant poor Emilia was right back to being awake. She did not appear pleased with this development.

“Finally,” Leo sighed, eager to get caught up on all the kissing he’d missed out on. He would have taken off towards the hallway in a sprint, but his niece was properly upset now and wouldn’t have appreciated it. For her sake, he stuck to a reasonable pace, bouncing her gently as he walked. “Shhh, you’re okay. Let’s go say hi to your mamá.”

Em made a quizzical little noise at him, but the bouncing seemed to soothe her.

Reyna was still in the middle of taking off her jacket when Leo and Piper got to the entryway. Her face immediately softened in a very un-Reyna way, though Leo assumed that was more Piper-and-Emilia-related than anything to do with him. He would have handed his darling niece off to her mamá then and there, but she had her hands full with her jacket and what looked like a grocery bag. “Hi, mi corazón,” Reyna said softly, pressing her forehead to Piper’s. “Apologies for being late, but I finally got to drop Juliet off with her New Rome foster parents today, and I figured I’d take a brief detour while I was there.”

“That’s amazing.” Piper beamed at her. She reached into the bag and pulled out a ForSnax box that probably held cake and/or donuts. Whatever was in there, Piper’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Marry me again,” she said immediately.

Reyna laughed softly and leaned forward again, this time to kiss her wife. “Anything you want.”

The whole thing was lovely, and would have been even more lovely if Leo hadn’t still been severely lacking his husband. He’d assumed they’d be arriving together, for some reason, and he was a little annoyed at Reyna for going out of her way to pick up baked goods but not bring his husband despite the fact that they’d apparently both been in New Rome.

At least Reyna then turned to Leo and took her daughter out of his arms, which meant he got to enjoy looking and pulling faces at his adorable niece again without feeling like he was balancing a sweet, fussy, increasingly heavy sack of potatoes in his incredibly sore arms. 

“And hello to you, too, mija. Did you have a nice time with your mom and your tío?”

She cooed happily in response, and Leo couldn’t help but smile. 

“Yeah, she did.” He booped her nose, and the little girl giggled. “We plotted so many shenanigans, didn’t we, Emilia?”

Reyna shook her head at his antics, but her expression remained soft. 

Then she looked him over, lifting an eyebrow.

“You look a little tense.”

“You guys are way too sweet and it’s making me feel incredibly sick and kind of single,” Leo whined, because the chances of him admitting to Reyna that holding her daughter for thirty minutes had made his shoulders cramp were null.

“Alright then, I guess I’ll leave,” a new voice chimed in, and finally, finally Jason appeared behind Reyna. “Though I kind of thought you’d at least talk to me before jumping all the way to divorce.”

“You abandoned me! For a whole day! That calls for drastic measures,” Leo complained to his husband before collapsing into his arms with a content sigh. Jason leaned down to greet him with a kiss.

“Hi,” was the first thing his husband said when they finally came up for breath. “Sorry for being so late. I had some stuff I needed to drop off back home.

“Less apologizing, more kissing,” Leo whined, before promptly deciding to take matters into his own hands and pulling Jason back down.

Jason’s hands found his shoulders and his eyebrows shot up. 

“Reyna was right, actually. You’re really tense.”

“I spent the last thirty minutes weight lifting an infant,” Leo told him, sighing. 

Jason snorted. “You could have just told Piper-”

“No chance in hell,” Leo said immediately. “I’ve apparently got some working out to do before we adopt a kid, though.” He groaned.

“I’ll put it on the list,” Jason told him, eyes shining the way they always did when he looked at Leo, especially when they were talking about children.

“Now look who’s being nauseating," Piper teased. “Quit making out, dinner is getting cold.”

“Again, I’m the one who actually made the food. And it’s not even warmed up because those two,” Leo pointed one accusatory thumb at Reyna, the other at Jason,” didn’t bother to tell us when they were getting here. If I want to postpone dinner so I can catch up on making out with my husband, I’m allowed to.”

“I guess you’re okay with me warming it up, then?” Piper offered. “I could taste test it. Add some cream.”

“You are the worst person on the planet and I hate you,” Leo grumbled, reluctantly untangling himself from his husband. He’d known Piper long enough to know she would make good on that threat and kill the taste of his perfect curry out of spite, and he couldn’t let that happen.

~~~~

Mortifyingly, Leo ended up having to ask Jason to carry the—admittedly huge—pot of curry over to the table, because his own arms were completely numb from Emilia carrying duties.

He was definitely going to need a lot more practice with carrying around children before he and Jason adopted one of their own.

Judging by how fond Piper always looked when she saw him interacting with Em, he figured he’d have ample opportunity, though.

————

Notes:

Fun fact: I have two really awful uni exams in a bit over a week and I’m posting this in parts to distract myself from a really horrendous anxiety episode I’m having about something entirely unrelated to the exams in question.

Also. I did argue with myself for a while (and bother a friend about) whether I was allowed to tag the romantic ships on this because they’re like. Relatively minor? Despite the fact that Pipeyna are literally married with a child and kiss? I’m nothing if not a moron fundamentally.